7/26/04

One aspect of what I think of as higher development in human nature is the capacity for self-reflection. At least since the third century Before, knowing thyself has been a valued feature of upwardly mobile cultures, at least the ones that aren't primarily invested in weapons of mass destruction or loud screaming religious conflict. In our own society, this virtue has taken many forms, from psychoanalysis to liberation politics to the human potential movement. But a more visceral and in many ways admirable manifestation has been in the arena of alternative sexuality and its accompanying trappings, specifically in the sm/bd community.

Theories of the origins of sadism (or in its previous incarnation, "cruelty") have abounded in human history, but only in contrast to attitudes about "normal" behavior. In a loot-rape-and-pillage cult, being the big guy in front with the mad expression and the dripping axe is not only okay, it's exemplary. In a religious group, it's evidence of demonic possession -- at least for someone on the opposing side. In other power structures it might be seen as an occupational hazard or a regrettable but necessary feature of various vital societal members like grand inquisitors or kings.

It's only been in modern times that any rationality has entered the discussion. The desire to cause pain can only be properly observed when it is treated as a purely psychological phenomenon, divorced from any supernatural or moral considerations. At that point, it becomes just another activity, like the Four F's of my Psych 101 days -- fighting, feeding, fleeing and sex. But to make that distinction is to perform a vigorous straitjacket escape from the whole enclosing structure of that little thang we like to call civilization, which is why the Marquis de Sade and his fascinating literary legacy are venerated, or at least name-checked, by a lot of guys with no interest at all in the clever things you can do with dripping tallow and naked serving girls but a consuming enthusiasm for personal liberation.

Ultimately, the study of sadism becomes more a question of treatment than of etiology. Whether it's a natural impulse left over from our veldt-roaming forebears, a quirk of personality, a response to the unbearable weight of civility or the legacy of a brutal childhood, it's generally considered more important to contain or ameliorate the practice than to muse over its background. While the backstory of pain lust is certainly engrossing, if you like that sort of thing, the real presence of real human aberrants really is a far more pressing issue, particularly if you're the one hung upside down from the tree while the hulk in the black hood sharpens the sickle. Unless you like that sort of thing, of course, which is another matter entirely.

In the same way that we differentiate between media representation and real life, it is necessary to shake the scales of conventionality from your eyes to make any sense of an innate passion for hurtful behavior in yourself, given that you're even capable of doing so (those who are not are probably better dead, and frequently become so at an otherwise inappropriate age). Once isolated, though, such a drive ceases to disguise itself as an overwhelming innate emotion or moral failure or supernatural apparition and is reduced to a mere variation, a mechanism of the mind, a pet monster kept in the basement and taken out occasionally for amusement purposes only. It is the achievement of our modern age that this kind of recreational perversion is not only permitted, there's even a body of opinion in genuine support of it as long as nobody gets permanently damaged. How much more reasonable can you get than that?

But there's more here than meets even the most mordant eye. In this process of rationalizing and channeling emergent bugs in the h. sapiens operating system, our culture takes on a task as old as the species: how do we restrain our most asocial impulses in a way that doesn't result in either pogroms or anarchy? In truth, the real need is not to suppress these desires. We have no idea why this stuff bubbles up out of the psyche, and we could have a need for it. Besides, you never know when that random shoe-sniffer might just come up with a cure for cancer if he can ever be persuaded to put down the 6D stiletto heel and go for it -- or if he isn't locked up for life or reduced to jellybrained complacency with psychotropics. But we do want to harness the potential of perv without allowing it to run down random strangers at will.

This hardly stops at the dungeon door. Consider such traits as religious fervor or acquisitiveness, cravings that can have positive and negative consequences but are certainly every bit as abstracted and intractable as sadism. To be able to manage these as well as the Saturday Night Whip It Club does with its bailiwick could be immensely valuable, with far more universality.

In fact, there's at least one quirk of humanity that might be seen as standing at the very heart of all the various miseries associated with this subject: the implicit urge to divide behaviors into "acceptable" and "unacceptable," without regard as to whether anyone or thing is actually harmed by the action in question. Put that one under the microscope of analysis, unveil it as the twistiest kink of all, and there's no telling what kind of good might come out.

S&M: saving the world since 1800. No, really!

7/19/04

Last week's essay on the perils of multilateral self-employment seemed to have resonated with some of my noble constituents. One wrote back to discuss the subject in greater depth. Seems he's in the process of taking a long hard dump on his good paying job (long hours, bad benefits, no respect -- and there's also a negative side) and found my admonitions on the subject highly instructive. Then on our way back from thermonuclear Salem we stopped in with some old pals in Portland, techies since before the beginning engaged in the difficult art of retraining, and I found myself in the unnerving position of being consulted on the proper technique for vending a independent service business.

Like I was some kind of authority. Like I was an example. Like I was successful.

Hmm. Well. We've all had those giftie gae moments of saeing oursel's in the eyes of others. Most of the time they're not all that pleasant, particularly if the saer is, say, the highway patrol. Too many of those and you're ready to pull in the old horns and not get jiggy with anybody else's POV at all. And then of course you're limited to the scenery from behind the ol' snozzola, and like the rear dogs in the sled team, the view never changes.

But every now and again you get a chance to stand momentarily in a spotlight of unalloyed, even unwitting, validation. It's not something you want to get too often -- overexposure to that glare can induce the dreaded Rock Star Syndrome. Take an ordinary, somewhat talented, relatively unassertive teenager, subject him to an unending diet of limos, big checks, screaming audiences, adoring fans and an unlimited supply of drugs and groupies, all the while telling him over and over that he's the biggest thing since bottled anchovies, and voila! total egomaniac asshole. And don't try to tell me that on you it'd look good. Believe me, it wouldn't. Still, a little reassurance now and then that you're not totally wasting your time in your skin is of enormous value to even the most stolidly temperate of us.

My take on my own sporadic career as an independent something or other can be summed up in my introduction to the old Jimmie Reed tune Big Boss Man: "I'm self-employed. My boss is an idiot and my employee is a lazy lout." Probably make a good teeshirt. I've never felt any particular talent at not being a wage-slave, although as somebody once pointed out, playing music for a living means you're forever doing something that everyone else hates and avoids, namely looking for work. Without the natural bombast and self-assurance of a born salesman (in which case you sell the most expensive thing you can find, which ain't music), the average performer (me) stumbles along through this all-important stage of their activities, their income level somewhat dependent on the consistency and sophistication of that stumbling. All this vague inefficiency can feel remarkably like vague inefficiency, even when it works. This in turn masks any sense of accomplishment, the actual success of someone who ekes out a living inducing compression waves in the air -- or doing anything else on their own device, for that matter.

For a while now I've had a concept of the proper balancing of economics to human society as an equation: culture over commerce. As long as the interactions of humanity are more important than simple buying and selling, society remains well. It's when and where money starts to outbid everything else for allocation of resources that things get out of hand. One of the attractions of being independent is that you have firm control over the culture/commerce ratio, at least in your own life. But to some extent, it's a zero sum game: what you gain in the rest of your life you lose in your personal eschequer. And that can also leave you cheating at solitaire over the state of your unity, nagged into permanent uncertainty by all the car ads and prosperity porn of for-profit media.

July 4th I went to the grocery store late, fetching nose spray for Sandahbeth, who'd run out. It was a singularly unrewarding chore -- I'd already been to visit her at the hospital and she'd called me back out, apologizing for forgetting -- and I was in a slightly sullen mood heading for the register. I passed a couple walking in the opposite direction, and some trick of acoustics let me catch the man saying "--good job--" as they passed.

For a moment, I actually thought he was talking to me. Then for another moment I was slightly embarrassed for thinking it. Then I realized that, intended or not, I actually had that compliment coming. I was indeed doing a good job, a very good job, a superb job. Like a zillion other people laboring under difficulties, I was keeping on course with a blizzard of tasks and fulfilling them as honestly and competently as I knew how. But when you're working for yourself, when most of the tasks you do are only peripheral to the value you provide to anyone else, you don't get as many encouraging words as you might.

I may be reaching, but I prefer to think that the Big Wha wanted me to hear that. I'll take my praise wherever I find it. My boss may be an idiot, but at least he's tolerant.

7/12/04

While food and I have never been the most equitable of workplace partners, in recent years I've acquired considerable respect for the process of short-order chefery, the synchronizing of a half-dozen task sets to a unified end, be it lunch or a fulfilled mortgage payment. For me, natch, it isn't don't-start-the-eggs-til-the-bacon's-done, it's more like don't-order-CDs-til-the-last-check-clears, but the juggle's the thing and I'm busily keeping numerous balls in the air.

For a long time I've felt the gulf that exists between managers and producers is mostly a matter of temperament. While both are goal oriented, the guy busy grinding the grits is not concerned about the price of burlap bags. Managers share with fry cooks the mindset of constantly monitoring multiple tasks, and the more they move into that viewpoint, the less important any one job gets. Like a computer running multiple threads, the only real poignancy any given process has is its place within the entire enterprise, its interrupt level, its preemptive ability. This is exactly why your vitally important paperwork gets shoved to the bottom of the pile while the big guys go sailing through. Don't take it personal, bub, it's not vindictive, it's just the way it works.

But like the Karamazovs say, everything is juggling, and everybody drops. Eventually, even the most effective, disciplined, organized, schizophrenic manager runs out of metaphoric hands and starts spilling tasks all over the floor like so many information spheres. Probably one of the chief expenses of Paying The Cost To Be The Boss is that (voice="clint") a man's gotta know his limits (/voice), necessitating the robbing of innumerable Peters, Toms, Dicks and Marys to pay one overburdening Paul. Not only do you gotta know when to hold and when to fold em, you gotta know who to hold and fold to, another factor in the matter of your important papers at the bottom of the pile.

I'm as big an ego as anyone else on this dirtball, though most of my attachment doesn't relate to the usual fame/fortune/dancing girls. I've always had a big stake in the variety of my abilities. Like a Swiss Army knife, I may not be the perfect tool for a given job, but look at all the stuff I can do! I'm equally bad at music, writing, graphic design, performing, mechanical and electronic invention, computers, audio recording, home improvement and so much more.

With a curriculum vitae like that, you'd think I'd have it made economically -- hey, if one oar doesn't pull, just grab another. And it's true that it frequently provides a patchwork support for my beleaguered unemployed-with-disabled-wifie lifestyle. One week I'm cranking out CDs, the next I'm cranking up a foundation. Sounds a lot more interesting than the same 9 to 5 (or these days 8 to midnight), the same cubicle, the same fungoid coworker, the same bus, the same boss -- as William Gibson extrapolates, "Corporate uniform, corporate anthem, corporate funeral."

Well, there's interesting and then there's interesting. While it's tempting to think that, like rental properties, you can just keep adding income streams based on core competencies until your take reaches the desired level, therešs always the Manageršs Curse to contend with. Each of these micro-occupations comes with its own stack of tasks to manage, advertising and toolage and skill upkeep and the constant reeducation that any job more complicated than ditchdigger requires in these here modern days of the information age (and come to think of it, don't the ditchdiggers need to bone up on the latest techniques -- subscribe to Turned Earth or its rival publication A Spade?).

It's the proverbial zero sum game: any time I spend keeping one biznis in biznis is time I don't spend on another. Out cutting and pasting sheetrock? Not practicing guitar. Writing the weekly online essay? Not landscaping the yard (hey -- people come over here to record, it's gotta look at least relatively nice). Singing again? CD's don't burn themselves, buster. And so forth.

I hate to admit it, but specialization, dull and monocultural and high-entropic though it might be, is at least as useful an economic technique as diversity, and my never-say-job independent contractor status needs a big booster shot of professionalism right in its slacker keister if I expect to continue feeding the mortgage dragon its monthly monetary maiden. Which isn't to say that I'm going to go all formal on anyone else's keister either -- it's not like I can settle down with a single task that I'd wanna make babies with. That's been the whole problem all along. What I need is to sort out my puny human priorities a little better, mebe even come up with a -- gulp -- plan.

But it's really a sign of progress for me when I reach a place where, instead of constantly gasping for breath and spitting out octopuses as yet another breaker washes over my head, I'm treading water high enough to actually look around for habitable land and even rip out some halfcocked dogpaddle in its general direction. It ain't exactly the Great American Success Story, but it's a start.

7/5/04

Our sermon for this week centers in the throes of social evolution and even revolution as we mark the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the mandatory talk-til-you-bleed overview of the landmark legislation on NPR, the commentator went into the background of events that led to it, tracing the conflict between recalcitrant southern whites who viewed any attempts at desegregation as attacks on their way of life and northern moderates who were motivated both by sympathy for the plight of blacks under the system and a certain embarrassment in the face of such a corny old anachronism as the involuntary separation of people on the basis of skin tone. A considerable part of that embarrassment seemed to stem from a feeling of "What will the neighbors think?" -- the neighbors, in this case, being the rest of the theoretically civilized world.

Thus, the CRA partly assumes the political role that a pang of conscience would in a single human personality, a force of stabilization and reining in of more atavistic impulses within the society as a result of perceived impropriety. Certainly the systems involved differ wildly in scale, structure and complexity, but the feedback process seems similar enough. (Just ignore that cracking sound, this limb's sound as a dollar. No wait...)

The real question in all of this isn't whether there's a similarity, but rather why such a thing as a conscience should even exist, personal or political. This week also marked the release of a scientific study contending that a hitherto controversial theory of the evolution of intelligence has serious supporting evidence. The theory contends that prehuman simians got smarter as a result of the adaptive advantages of trickery and deception, growing extra neocortex in a biological arms race to outwit their fellows in the grand competition for vittles and offspring.

This idea, cheerfully dubbed the Machiavelian Intelligence hypothesis, has been around for a goodly while. It was first presented, appropriately enough, back in the age of Nixon. Until now, though, there wasn't much hard data to back it up. The recent study compared brain size with tendency towards deception in all 18 brands of hip contemporary primates and found a high degree of correlation. Very high. The implication is that this barrel of monkeys does in fact get a lotta mileage out of spoofing the neighbors.

The guys who came up with this particular paper also muse that deceit is only part of a larger social intelligence that primates developed mostly as a means of getting along in groups, the ability to model the varied perceptual frameworks of your fellow furries, to put yourself in their fleabitten pelts long enough to make some sort of prediction as to what they'd do if you, say, ran off with their mate. Thus, cheating becomes a biproduct of group interaction, a veritable social disease. Gee, Officer Krupky, we're really upset.

Deception may well be an emergent feature of any given intelligent competitive structure. A convenient example would be that network of networks, the Internet. Within its primary communication mode, email, we find both the overt manipulations and mislabelings associated with spam and the deeper and more sinister realm of spyware, webbots and viral infestation, a whole cornucopia of dirty stinking lies. All this stuff didn't just happen, o'course -- there were a number of those pesky trickster apes you've heard so much about involved. Still, the form the fakeouts take is concomitant with the system's own structure, implicit in the design.

Given, then, that scams and schemes are a natural feature of social intelligence, what's the functionality of remorse? Like some peculiar complex bug in a computer product, it can be difficult to determine whether the ostensible feature of conscience in humans is a result of wetware evolution or some adaptation by our cultural OS. Hardwired or soft-programmed, though, the better angels of our nature look to be here, queer and in need of a beer. Ethical intelligence is enough of a feature in h. sapiens that we even have a term for unfortunate individuals born or developing without it: sociopath.

The answer that settles out of the foamy whey of my own perception is in keeping with my sense that any system that maintains its existence over long periods of time is guilty as charged of homeostasis, possessing feedback circuits that prevent or retard it from straying too far from an optimum state. In the case of a species, that state is "continuing to reproduce," while in a government it would hopefully be "maximum benefit to all its citizens."

Any species dependent on socialization for its survival (yes, I'm talking to you, mister barrel of monkeys) cannot allow too much con-artistry in its members, lest the benefit of the individual become the destruction of the group. But since our entire adaptive feature is based on precisely that same sweet lemon, devolution's not likely. Hence, the emergence of the hand brake of guilt-tripping, the Jewish mother as a force for good in the human world. And while nation states and international relations are pure artifices, little jokes we whipped up together and agreed to take seriously, as intelligent networks they too display emergent features -- the national equivalents of remorse, conscience, even sociopathy if you care to point it up.

Which all leads inevitably to the $64 question (cheap!): how do you guilt-trip a corporation?