A Little Bit on Anecdotes

I came across a plea today on Facebook, asking for people to send to a particular individual stories about the negative impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially called “Obamacare,” for the president who signed it into law.  I pointed out that anecdotes are not good evidence, and I had objections to their use as such, since I feel it is emotionally manipulative and therefore not totally truthful.  I was met by a lot of opinions counter to my own. The arguments were fairly varied, there were some ad hominem attacks, but most seemed to take my use of the word “anecdote” as some sort of insult, so I thought I’d write a short piece explaining anecdotal evidence, appeals to emotion, and the part I often see them play in politics.  Here is the post:

https://www.facebook.com/Corie03/posts/4789775441622

I saw it because it was shared by Julie Borowski, who does some great videos on libertarian issues on youtube, check her out:

https://www.facebook.com/JulieBorowski

http://www.youtube.com/TokenLibertarianGirl

I. Anecdotal Evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

Anecdotal evidence isn’t really evidence, at least in the clinical or scientific sense.  It is a story, or an example, usually involving a real person or a particular case. Moreover, it is often used in the place of evidence, supporting or intending to lead to a particular conclusion. Facts only become evidence in the context of a conclusion, like saying “smokers die of heart disease at a higher rate than non-smokers” supporting “People should not smoke.”  Telling a story about a particular negative impact of the ACA, like saying, “This is Dan and Rachel. Obamacare cost them $10,000,” is an anecdote; a story.  It might make you feel bad, but it doesn’t represent the negative impact of the ACA for anyone beyond them. I could tell you a story about my father being killed by a truck. Would you be persuaded to ban trucks?  It’s an anecdote, and isn’t sufficient for the support of most arguments.

II.  Confirmation Bias.

            Anecdotal evidence tends to contain elements of confirmation bias, which is a logical fallacy where one ignores evidence that is contrary to one’s argument or conclusion. The woman in the link was essentially asking for such.  She did not ask for positive stories about the ACA, she asked for specifically negative ones. If the stories were truly evidence, they would be neutral to the collector, who would then form a conclusion from it, not the other way around.

III.  Data and Presentation.

            Somebody asked, “What is the amount of stories of people being affected [that would] drive us over the hump of "anecdotal"? 10,000 stories?” (brackets added by the author of this article). The short answer is that stories cannot be evidence until they are put in context of an argument, and then, who would read them? When dealing with statistics it is the commonalities that matter and must be presented; the facts of the story are superfluous beyond the commonality they have with one another.  Here is a fact:

Under Obamacare, 30-year-old men face average premium hikes of 260%

Source: http://americanactionforum.org/research/premium-increases-for-young-invincibles-under-the-aca-and-the-impending

This is data that would be common to all the people affected, including myself.  They may live in New York or Florida, be gay or straight, be black of white.  What matters about the data is the commonality that allows us to put it in context.  If I said, “I’m seeing a 260% increase in my health insurance premiums,” you could not consider it evidence that the AVERAGE 30 year-old man would see a jump in his premiums.  Only data collection can support that.

II.  Emotional Manipulation.

            Why do we tell so many stories?  Why are there so many human interest pieces on the news?  In short, they are effective, or the news providers wouldn’t use them. Politicians would abandon all appeals to emotion if voters did not respond to them well. That’s really what anecdotes are; They aren’t evidence.

            Is emotional manipulation truth?  The story might be true, on some level, but is the decision that is a reaction to that story based on truth.  Essentially it is not, or it would be made with reason and evidence instead of just emotion. The story does not create an honest relationship between the speaker and the listener. In fact, the speaker has made an assumption on some level that the listener will not respond to evidence alone.  At this point the rationalization for engaging in emotional manipulation is the ends: convincing someone of the correct position for the wrong reasons. 

IV.  Moral Arguments.

Whether or not the end justifies the means has been a topic in morality and ethics discussions since the dawn of time.  Those of you who know me know my opinion on it: action is always the locus of discretion in morality.  When you make an ends-justifies-means argument, or imply it through your actions, you are representing an entire moral system that moves the locus of discretion away from the actions themselves to the consequences (or intent, if you are a Kantian).

What is interesting about the above the appeal for stories is that they desire to show the negative impact (the consequences of means) of the implementation of the ACA when the originators consider such consequences as being justified by their perceived ends. They are essentially making a moral argument that the end does not justify the means while simultaneously utilizing actions that support the opposite conclusion. The moral argument is self-contradictory if you yourself are unwilling to apply it.

A true moral argument against the ACA is actually quite easy to make, especially if you use libertarian morals:

Killing people is wrong.

If you don’t get health insurance, the government will tax/fine you (for the purposes of this argument those actions are interchangeable).

If you don’t pay the fine, the government will eventually arrest you.

If you feel the arrest is unjust, and refuse to be imprisoned, you will be killed.

The ACA is immoral/evil.

V. A Fight With Mike Tyson.

            The left has been doing the emotional manipulation game a very long time. The image of the right as being heartless automatons is mostly a product of how good the left is at evoking emotion in people. Emotional appeal is their world, and you better be prepared if you want to step into the ring with them, because it will be like jumping into a fight with Mike Tyson in his prime. If you were wanting to knock them out, you would have a very hard time of it, especially in the health care debate.

This is ultimately the problem with exchanging stories: there is no end to them, and the listener is left to decide the merits of them on a one-to-one basis, rather than as a whole field of evidence. You can tell a very touching story about the financial hardships brought on by the ACA on a particular family, but the other side can merely tell their own story about someone who died because they didn't have health insurance (I used Chuck Schuldiner of Death as an example).  If you weigh these two stories on their own, and believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or that greater needs outweigh lesser ones, than even logically you will lose the argument.

The real argument attempting to be made is that the amount of pain inflicted by the law is greater than that it prevents. One can only make this argument beyond anecdotes, in the world of real, large-scale evidence.  You could certainly add anecdotes to real evidence, but what does that accomplish?  Either someone is persuaded by reason or they aren’t; I don’t believe you can add reason and emotion together and reach some threshold that tips the scales in your favor.

VI.  Summation

Define your position. Make real arguments with meaningful evidence and avoid biasing it. Follow through with consistent moral ideology. Make pragmatic and trade-off arguments with evidence, not appeals to emotion. Don’t resort to tactics that are intellectually and morally inferior to reason. 

The Mike Tyson reference is one I see used a lot by Stephan Molyneux, a brilliant libertarian philosopher, and it is usually quite a good analogy.  Check him out at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/

The Microscope, part 2

Part 2 of a short fiction work set in my unique world.  I'm trying for updates every Wednesday.

Part 1 here:  http://davidvandykestewart.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-microscope-part-1.html

            Felix forced his breathing to slow in an effort to control his anxiety and stop his shakes. Laying prone, he pushed his face into the soft fabric covering his shoulder to mask the sounds of his breathing as footfalls from the stairwell amplified in their approach.  He pushed his bag, containing the microscope, hard into his ribs and said a silent prayer to Prometheus.

“Of course my lord, tell me more,” a demure voice said.  Felix could see two sets of feet from the gap beneath the bed skirt. One set was clad in delicate shoes with a satin bow upon them, and a straight sock revealing a thin ankle and lower leg.  The other wore fancy men’s shoes with a bright gold buckle and the legs were clad in red hose, which covered a calf and ankle of exceeding fatty girth.  Suddenly, the fat legs disappeared and Felix felt the mattress above him condense down on top of him, pressing against the tense muscles of his back. The ropes under the mattress creaked and he slipped a foot closer to the edge to avoid the possible death that would result from their failure. He looked up and saw the little dog continuing to stare at him from just beyond the edge of the bed.

“Now show me some of that famous northern hospitality!” The man on the mattress said with a deep laugh.  Two shoes could be heard flopping down on the floor.

“Of course. Would my lord care for a drink?”  The woman asked.  Felix was now aware of the stench of the man’s feet. This hooker sure is earning her pay. He buried his face deeper into the cloth of his shirt as the aroma assaulted him.

“I’d rather have some coca. Do a line with me!”

“It’s not something my handler would approve of, my lord.”

“Bollocks to your handler!  You know how hard it is to get this stuff? And this isn’t some raw, shit-colored coca either. This is a rare treat I’m offering you here. I insist.”  The man cackled and after a few seconds it turned subtly into a cough.

“Very well, my lord, but why don’t we have some wine first, while our heads are clear?  The Duke of Fastia sent this himself as part of the gift. It would be a pity to insult him by not enjoying it.”

“You were hired to keep tabs on me then?  Bah! I should have known it. Very well, pour me a glass, and I shall drink to your beauty.”  The woman hurried the small dog out of the room (which seemed to gaze intently at Felix the entire time it backed out the door), then returned a moment later. Felix could hear a wine bottle being uncorked  and the wine bubbling as it flowed into a glass.

“A fine gift indeed,” the man said, slurping the wine, “I’ll shall be sure to thank the kind duke on the morrow. Now, I’d prefer to end the night with the finest treat, ha!”

A feeling of dread sank into Felix’s stomach at the thought of having to hide under the bed while the fat man actually tried to plow the prostitute. His fear (for that action at least) went unfulfilled as the man began to laugh uproariously, then slowly gasp, then snore. 

“That’s right, go to sleep you fat bastard,” the woman said, her voice transforming suddenly from cultured and articulate to angry and cockneyed. “You’re lucky I’m being paid not to slit your throat. Good gods, do you ever wash your feet?” Something rattled on the wall, then Felix saw the back of a painting come down and obscure the woman’s feet.  A familiar sound of  falling tumblers and turning keys filled his ears. “Here it is,” she said to (as she assumed) herself.

A thief hiding from another thief. This will be a scrumptious anecdote, Felix thought. He watched the woman’s feet move swiftly around the room.  Felix could hear the sliding of drawers and shuffling of papers and books. He knew right away that the sweet-turned edgy woman wasn’t any sort of escort, but was a contract agent of some kind. Perhaps she’s not an expert in infiltration. Perhaps rather it is personal…deception? He wondered what she was there to acquire, and if it might be the same thing for which he was hired. It was more than possible that the fat (and now loudly snoring) man had a few items worth paying a professional to steal. He also wondered whether the messy floor, littered with books and items, would give him away. Let’s hope she just thinks the mark is as bad at organization as he is with personal hygiene.

Felix’s anxiety began to lessen a bit when the woman opened the bedroom door and walked down the hall. He had only managed to find half of what he was employed to gather, but he was fixing up his mind to leave with that. Even though the delicate feet belonged to a woman, she represented the unknown, and that meant risk. The question picking at his mind was whether the greater risk was this small woman or returning to Victor with less than what the contract asked. There were varying degrees of reward for success and punishment for failure, and depending on the nature of the assignment it could be early retirement. If such a retirement would be to a villa beside a canal or to an oblong box would depend on the customer beyond Victor. 

As he thought of returning with merely the strange invention, he considered that this assignment, though certainly not a success, was not a total failure either. He had been told not to kill the target, which he preferred as a general rule, although clients rarely spelled it out for him as such. He had also been informed beforehand of the quantity of pay he might expect, and though he was always eager for a large stipend (and 500 argents was substantial, even for an agent as well-traveled as Felix), he wasn’t greedy. Partial payment may have not be enough to hope for, but all things considered, he thought this wasn’t the type of job, failing to complete, he might receive death.

He craned his head out to take another listen, and flinched from the smell of the fat man sleeping soundly above him. The faint sounds of hurried rummaging echoed from down the stairs.  He pushed himself forward along his belly, inching himself out from underneath the sagging rope-strung mattress.  He twisted around, his heart leaping suddenly as something touched his back.  Behind him he saw the little dog, sniffing at his waist.  He sighed.

The dog barked.

Shit. Felix heard footsteps coming back up the stairs. He took one last look at the bed, weighing his chances. The dog barked again and looked at him with a smile and upturned ears.  Cute.  Felix maid his choice and pushed himself the rest of the way out of the bed and stood up.  He quickly strapped the leather bag containing the strange device back onto his back. He took one last look around the room, hoping to see the journal, then dashed for the window as footsteps approached.  He no longer made an attempt at stealth, letting his footfalls patter on the hardwood floor. He grabbed a hold of the top of the window and swung his feet out the narrow opening and let himself drop.

He had expected to smoothly slip down to the narrow ledge below the window, but instead, he found his feet dangling over air as his torso, widened by the sack containing the hefty brass instrument, stuck in the narrow rotating window.  He squirmed in panic as the footsteps approached.  Finally he could feel the window creaking and giving way, and he was wiggling out. 

An inch.  Then another half.  He looked up to see a young blonde woman, whose pristine white face and green eyes he recognized from the circus crowd.  He wiggled some more as she ran toward the window.

“Gimme that!” she cried as Felix finally felt himself go free of the window.  He didn’t have time to put his feet on the ledge, and considered how he would twist himself into a proper tumble as he hit the ground.  He turned himself around, then felt a powerful tug as his momentum stopped again, this time just outside the window.   He looked back over his shoulder to see the girl holding tight to the strap of his bag, her feet planted against the wall on either side of the window, straining to pull Felix’s hefty weight back inside.

“I don’t think you have it in you,” Felix said as turned around and gripped her slender arms in his own large hands.  He placed his toes on the ledge, pulling as hard on the girl as she was on him.  He began tugging at her fingers, pulling them off the strap.

She grunted.  “You’ll regret this.”

“No new feelings there.”  One of her hands fell off the strap and her shoulder and torso jerked toward the window opening as she cried out.  Felix began working on her other hand.  A flash of silver drew his eye as the girls arm darted out the window.  Felix felt a rush of heat and pain as her knife cut through the cloth on his left forearm.  Warm blood began to flow down under the shirt, soaking it.

The fright returned.  He pulled up on the girl’s arm before she could attack again and bit her fingers.  She screamed and let go.  The suddenness of the release caused Felix to fall away from the ledge and window.  He bent forward and flailed his arms for some kind of hold, but inertia was unforgiving; he tumbled away from the stone face of the house.

Spinning about, his left arm groped instinctively at a nearby tree limb.  His fingers found a hold and an his body, now out of balance with the heavy microscope strapped to his back, jerked and twisted with the sudden stop of motion.  He winced as the cut in his arm opened under the pressure.  The tree limb sagged, then snapped.  He fell toward the darkness.

His relaxed feet hit turf and he tumbled to stop some of the momentum, feeling a sharp pain in his left ankle as he did so.  He rolled onto his side in an attempt to protect the delicate artifact on his back, but cringed as he hear it hit the ground through his bag.  No time to worry about that now, he thought.

“Fucking wanker of an acrobat!” Felix turned to see the pretty blonde face staring down at him from the window high above.  He paused to think a moment, then realized his hood and face covering were gone, torn off in the struggle at the window.  He looked back up to see the barrel of an old arcbus emerge from the window, then heard the distinctive hiss of a matchlock. 

Felix bolted for the wall. A second later, the gun fired.  A burst of dirt to his right let him know that the young woman had missed, and he silently thanked his god once again.  He jumped forward and pushed off of the wall with his left foot, suddenly shooting needles of pain under the pressure, and caught onto a tree limb.  He turned toward the outer wall and swung himself backward and forward.  Once he had enough momentum, he let go and flew against the stone wall. The tips of his fingers were only just able to grab hold of the iron bars leaning back out toward the street, but it was all he needed to painfully pull himself up onto the narrow row of iron rimed stones.  He contemplated jumping, but thinking of the pain in his ankle decided instead for a controlled fall. The clang of iron interrupted his train of thought as he saw a shiny bit of metal glitter in the moonlight just to his right.

“The next one won’t miss!” A voice from below said.  He looked down to see the blonde girl, a throwing knife held in her hand.  She maintained a proper stance as she held the knife by the edge, out to her side. 

Maybe I should take her word for it, he thought. “Then I’d better say my farewell,” he said with a smile. He flipped over the iron bars just as another throwing knife darted past his head.  He hung from them as he had when he had entered the estate, his feet dangling toward the street below.  He let go and tumbled again upon impact with the ground, doing his best to roll sideways and save the object in his bag.  He winced as he rolled along his left arm, the fresh cut given to him by his pursuer stinging under his sleeve, now hanging loosely from his arm.

He stopped and checked the wound. The cut was deep enough to draw sufficient blood to soak the cloth around it, but not so deep as to cut through the dermis.  He might not even have to stitch it up.  He thought again of the object strapped to his back. He wanted desperately to check it and see if he had damaged it; to see if all the effort was would be in vain after all, yet he knew he had not the time.  He came back to himself hearing the loud footfalls of plated boot-guards down the street, and quickly moved into the shadows of a nearby alley.

He peered around the corner of the building to see a pair of sheriffs, armored in dull plate breastplates and chausses with plane brimmed helmets, each topped with a yellow feather.  In typical fashion they carried torches, and one carried a long bladed pike and the other a brass blunderbuss. From where Felix stood, some forty yards away, he couldn’t tell the firing mechanism on the gun, but hoped the authorities of Minalay took the church’s prescriptions for firearm locks as seriously as the owner of the microscope.

Felix took a deep breath.  He stood on the opposite side of the house from where he had entered.  He hadn’t thought of an exit route in that particular direction, nor of any clever methods for evading the law.  He hoped he could circle around to the north, where his intended escape route was.  The girl knows who I am now, he thought. He watched the sheriffs wander around the front of the gated complex.  At least they’re between her and me. I should really bring along more than a set of lock picks to these jobs.

He saw the two men disappear around the corner of the high wall, the light from their torch faintly casting ghostly shadows into the street beyond.  Tensing his claves and getting back into his mindset for stealth, Felix crept down the street on the balls of his feet, staying close to the buildings on his left and moving quickly between alleys. He ducked into an alley when he saw the light of the men’s torch grow brighter around the corner.  He perked his ears and strained to hear bits of conversation over the wind.

“Telling you, Mudd, it was Bartolini’s house or I’m blind.”

“Sure it weren’t just a candle or somthin’?”

“Candles don’t go bang.”

“Well we can’t just walk in.”

“Of course not, the gate’s locked.”

“You know what I mean.  Legal-like. Robby, you hear that?”

“Hear what?”  Felix could barely see the pair on the corner, looking back toward the entrance gate of the estate.

“The gate.”  They trotted off in the direction of the mansion’s front gate, and Felix took the opportunity to cross over the corner and into the shadows of an alleyway facing the front of the estate. Soon after entering the shadows he realized it wasn’t an alley at all; by a trick of the light of the moon and the torches it had looked deep and dark, but the entire space was filled up by one of the narrow residences that clung into the free spaces in Minalay. It was scarcely eight feet wide, with a door in one corner and a window in the other.  Felix shrank against the narrow wall near the window as the two sheriffs walked back toward him.

“What do we do?” said the shorter man with the blunderbuss that Felix recognized as Mudd.  The pair were right past the edge of the house.

“We head back to postings, that’s what,” Robby said.  Felix’s heart quickened.  He looked around.  Above him was another window.  He pushed off the wall in another jump, hoping that the sill was deep enough for him to grapple.

“What if someone got shot?”

“Then they’re dead.  Either way, nobody’s home.” Felix hung from the open window some twelve feet off the ground.  He turned his head to see the two guards walk past the gap in the buildings.  Mudd cast a quick glance toward the door of the narrow alley-house, and Felix released his breath as they passed by.  He looked in the house to see a mustached man sleeping soundly in a bed pushed up next to the window.  Felix could hear him snore.

He looked back over his shoulder to see the torches flicker and separate past the opening of the house.  He lowered himself down, till he was hanging by his fingertips, Then let himself drop to the ground.  He silenced a wince of pain at the pressure in his left ankle. Doing his best not to favor the injured foot, he stepped back out into the street and hurried with as much stealth as he could muster toward his planned exit route.

He glanced at the front gate on his right as he passed, and paused a moment at a detail he checked out of habit.  The gate was closed, but in the gap between the bar and the iron frame a faint white line of moon light ran where the shadow of the lock’s bolt should have been.  He reached into his pocket and felt for a familiar friend and a trusted tool which took the shape of a fist-sized plastered paper ball of irregular shape.  Despite all the tumbles and falls it had survived, and he said once more a silent prayer of thanks.

They call you the god of darkness, deceit, and the forbidden, but today I name you Lord of Luck. Felix rushed on.  Surely she knows where I’m going by now.  It’ll be a foot race to the finish.  He turned the last corner and made for an alleyway.  A barrel lay sideways near its entrance, his subtle mark, placed in the daylight.

“Drop it, theif.”  A shock of blonde hair, shining white in the moonlight and falling down on an ornate dress turned black in the gloom, emerged from the darkened well of a door, standing between him and the alley.  In the woman’s hand was a flintlock pistol, trained on Felix.  He froze.

“How is that worth my while?” He said with a smirk.  Her eyes glowed softly with the moon to her side, which illuminated the gentle curve of her jaw and the soft lines around her mouth hinting at a darkened smirk. Felix pondered the image only long enough to look on her person for the book he was supposed to deliver with the device.

“I won’t kill you.”  She pulled back the hammer.

Felix began pulled the bag off his shoulder. “I suppose you would anyway if it weren’t for the sheriff in the next street over.”  He set it on the ground.

“Astute.  Hands up.” He complied.  She inched forward, her eyes staying locked with his, till she stood directly over the bag.  She kept the stare even as she reached down to the bag and with her left hand plied open the top.

“You’re a beautiful woman, you know.”  In the dim light her brow creased and her head tilted.  It was all the distraction Felix needed.  He threw the paper ball hard onto the ground at the woman’s feet.  It burst into orange flame and quickly became a mass of expanding smoke.

Felix closed his eyes and mouth and rushed in, just as the woman began to choke on the fumes.  He slammed into her, sending her splaying on the ground.  The pistol clanked on the ground as it fell away.  He bent down and grabbed for where he had memorized the position of the bag, found it with luck, and slung it over his shoulder.  While the woman was still lying on the pavement gagging at the tear gas from his hidden explosive, he reached up under her skirts.  He found what he sought, which was not the what most men aim to find in similar searches.  Tied against her thigh was a small leather-wrapped flat item, like a journal.

“I meant it!” he called out behind himself as he ran down the alley on his pre-determined escape path.  He heard the woman gasping and trying to call out after him, but he was already too far down into the dank echoes of the alley to comprehend what she said.

*

His ankle was an explosion of pain by the time he reached the circus, and dried blood caked his arm and sleeve.  The other performers were taking their final bow as he limped into the circle of tents and trailers, but he was too shaken and in too much pain to care much about taking in the prestige. He ducked into the dressing room. The lamps were still burning dimly as he slumped down into a folding chair in a bloody and dirty huff. 

He took a deep breath.  He plied open the cinch-top of his leather back and pulled forth his prize. The microscope looked strange and alien to him as he turned it around and inspected it.  He sighed as he saw the damage to it.  The top brass barrel was dented, and the lens there was shattered.  A small shelf below the lens apparatus was bent.

Might have to find an engineer to fix some this before we hand it off, he thought.  Luckily I have some notes on how it’s made.  He smiled.  He untied the string that held the leather-bound journal closed.  Inside was a poorly cut set of pages.  He sighed again as he read the first page, a diary entry.  He flipped through all the pages, most of them blank, but saw only more of the same.

This isn’t the book I needed.  This is that girl’s diary. He chuckled to himself. Lord of Luck indeed.  Thanks all the same.  He turned to the outside leaf.  It was blank.  I wonder what her name is.  

More Words That Emanate From the Hindquarters of Male (Genetically Modified) Cattle

1. GMO/Monsanto/etc.  Let’s be honest, most people who post on Facebook about Monsanto (you know who you are) have no flipping clue what they are talking about; they’ve never set foot on a farm and have no concept of how the food industry works. They have probably never seen a live domesticated chicken (hint: was it white?), or have no idea what the fertilization process of corn is. Unless you eat exclusively wild game, all the food you eat is genetically modified.  ALL OF IT.  Cows didn’t just evolve into oversized meat-bags producing an excess of milk.  Those phenotypes were carefully selected by humans over countless generations.  Likewise corn is a man-made food.  It literally cannot reproduce without human intervention. Somehow the approach of waiting for genetic mutations seem different and less frightening than just finding the code for the protein you want and inserting it into a genome, as if God is some celestial Microsoft, angry at you for transposing his source code. Unfortunately for a reasoned position like mine, the collusion of government with entities like Monsanto (which was a fervent Disney sponsor for a long time- fun fact) pollutes the facts of science by inciting a host of conspiracy theories.  Let me also mention that giving an animal drugs does not make it genetically modified any more than Bob Marley and Ronnie Coleman became genetically modified.  At the heart of the objection lies a distrust of science, which is (for the most part) founded on the greatest enemy of the typical American:  OBJECTIVE REALITY.  If you are one of these anti-GMO types let me help you steer clear of a few more evil man-made biological entities: insulin, vaccines, aspirin, antibiotics, cochlear implants… the list goes on.

2. Organic Related to the above, organic farming is a rather nonsensical term; the product is still organic insomuch as it is alive.  The label was created by the USDA to certify particular things, most notable the exclusion of “synthetic” substances from production.   This has the “benefit” of raising costs, lowering yields, lowering crop quality, and increasing risk of food-borne illness (due to heavier use of organic fertilizers such as manure).  As a choice of trade-offs, organic is a fine label, but most often when I see it heavily promoted it is to a regulatory end; that is, banning all non-organic (oxymoron) produce.  As an end, this would crush those with low incomes or small food budgets, raising the price much higher than that of current organic produce by creating a crippling food shortage.  If you want to buy organic that’s just fine; I’ll be over here enjoying an apple that is twice as big, twice as shiny, twice as crispy, cost half as much, and won’t give me lower bowel disturbance.

3. Faith in Humanity Humanity can accomplish nothing; only people can accomplish things. The airplane wasn’t invented by humanity, it was invented by the Wright brothers.  If you take away all the accomplishments, acts of kindness, or goodwill  of individuals and assign them to “humanity” you are doing a disservice to those people and also setting yourself up for disappointment, because lumped in with those great things will be the atrocities committed by humans: The atomic bombs (250,000 killed), world war 1 and 2 (90 million more killed), not including the The Holocaust (6 million murdered), Russian communism (20-50 million murdered), and Chinese communism (over 100 million murdered).  Just in the last century humanity has murdered the equivalent of the entire population of the United states.  Why on earth would you have faith in a race with that kind of track record?

4. Patriot/American Pride/National Pride/Proud to be an American

Patriotic American Heterbro: Aren’t you rooting for America in the Olympics?

Stew the Great: In the ideal contest the best individual wins.  They may not be American, and I’m okay with that.

Patriotic American Heterbro:  Don’t you have any AMERICAN PRIDE?!

This age-old appeal to tribal loyalty is even more hollow in the ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse United States, and yet its use persists, convincing people to sacrifice to the collective for some sense of belonging.  I am only proud of the things I have done, I cannot, and will not, feel pride for the accident of my birth or the great works of my forbearers. I may feel thankful, but that feeling is quite distant from pride.  Likewise I may appreciate the athletic display put on by a team, but I will feel no personal pride from watching them win.

5. Cis.  This is a Latin prefix, not actually a word, meaning “same as,” and while it is often used on its own, it is usually used in a host of nonsensical ways, such as “cisgender” (which literally means “classification the same as”) “cisprivilege” (the privilege of being the same as), and the very strange “cissexual” (which is used as a homonym for “heterosexual,” but is technically a homonym for “homosexual).  My first experience with “cis” was in the word “cisgendered,” used as an antonym for “transgendered,” and in that context it somewhat makes sense, though as it has become co-opted it has started to be less and less rational, degenerating into almost a degradation of all members of hetero-normative society.  I most encounter the word as a homonym for “normal” or “typical” in situations where calling typical as what it is might offend somebody by forcing them to acknowledge themselves as atypical, and as we all know, truth should always take a back seat to people’s feelings.  Other than that, it gets used derogatorily to cast me into the role of privileged masochistic oppressor, as in “chauvinist cis white male,” which brings me to my next word:

6. Privilege. Why not another feminist term?  After all, I have the privilege of speaking my mind.  This word is most often used to denounce the accomplishments of men as consequence of their genital arrangements, and that equal rights do not go far enough.  According to this point of view, I was only able to write my book or all my music because I have a penis, and the 3 nights a week I spent performing were all facilitated by my testicles.  Likewise great businessmen don’t experience success due to productivity or added value, but because people respect their penises and categorically push all vagina-having humans the to the side. Women like Ayn Rand (the most influential writer and philosopher of the last 100 years, and arguably the most influential woman who ever lived) and Margaret Thatcher (the first woman to lead major country) only experienced success because they bought into and supported the male hegemony.  Not included in the list of male privileges are: the draft, paying for dates, shorter life expectancy, child support and alimony, and prison rape.

The Microscope, part 1

The beginning of a short fiction work set in my unique world. I have a thing where my fiction just has to be read in Times, so sorry if the font bothers you. Enjoy! 

           Felix rubbed the rosin bag between his hands vigorously, making sure to get plenty on his forearms and the back of his hands.  He tossed the bag to Marta and proceeded to grip each hand to the opposite wrist, pulling hard and feeling for the familiar friction that meant safety during the show.  He had only ever dropped a partner once, and though it was a frightening experience, the girl had landed and tumbled gracefully, avoiding both injury and embarrassment.  Indeed, the girl had recovered so well that the even the ring leader thought it was merely a new part of the act.  Felix was careful since then to both maintain his grip strength through his daily exercises and be diligent about the rosin. 

            Marta dropped the bag a moment to adjust her skin-tight costume: a robust weave of silk and cotton in wide vertical stripes of black and gold that stretched from above her bare ankles to two straps on her shoulders. Felix looked up a moment to see one of her bare breasts as she fussed with the tight garment. He neither looked away out of politeness nor stared; it was a type of immodesty that became typical after a long stretch on the road with the same familiar faces.  Immodesty had, quite surprisingly, been a draw for the little circus, though of an unexpected sort, for in the mountain principalities bare ankles and shoulders were a great curiosity for men both young and old.

            Felix smiled to himself as he stood up to stretch. He thought about how flustered one of the members of the nobility would get sitting in the little tent with them. The revealing costumes (even aside from the nudity between the opposite sexes), the strange body positions as they stretched, and the colorful makeup, would to the unfamiliar, make them seem more like exotic prostitutes than acrobats.  He could feel his large back muscles begin to relax as he got further into the stretch, leaning off to the left with his left elbow being pulled even farther behind his head.  He could feel the excitement of the show begin to fade to a cool calmness and self-awareness of his body as his breathing slowed.  He opened his to see Marta mirroring his body with a slight half smile.

            Marta was lean and compact woman, shapely because of her ample muscle and short stature, which made both her hips and bust appear larger.  The striped costume further accentuated these assets.  Her black hair, which during the day was long and curly, was tied back in a ponytail, showing a stronger neck than what was fashionable for polite ladies.  Felix thought for that moment that she did indeed seem quite beautiful, with her white face paint and bright red lips, and wondered why they had always kept their relationship professional.  As she gazed back at him, her smirk drawing on him, he wondered if she returned the sentiment.

            No time for such feelings, Felix thought to himself. Business is business and that’s that.  Best not to get involved. Soon enough she won’t be more than a memory anyway.

*

            The show that night was both quieter and louder than the previous night’s peformance.  During each attempt at a feat the crowd would hush, waiting anxiously for Marta to land or be caught by Felix , then erupt in cheers when their tricks were pulled off flawlessly.  This was, of course, part of the art of performance that all the members of the troupe had mastered during their years of travel and from the feedback of countless audiences.  Each action was designed to look hard, even if it was quite easy, and the body language they employed reinforced this illusion. Marta would stand on the platform with her arms held out, looking nervous, and Felix would stand below, breathing deeply and wiping the sweat from his brow. They had done each motion many times before, and could easily run through their whole routine in twenty minutes, but that night they took their time to heighten the drama toward the end of the show, giving the crowd as much as they wanted.  Each tumble or catch drew forth applause like at the end of a great concerto.

Occasionally, during the prestige, Felix would take a moment to look out past the bright spotlights, which were often a wonder in and of themselves to outsiders, to see a crowd that was noticeably more highbrow than the night before. The fact that the little motley troupe could have a fully lit circus indoors at night made more than a few people in each town wonder about the legality of the technology they employed to generate such illumination. Familiar faces in the crowd, all set above rich cloth revealed that the nobility would turn out for plebian entertainment, to the point of attending more than a single night, as long as there was a technical fascination to catch their eye. To the peasants and merchants that were standard at a circus, the strangeness of unfamiliar technical capacity was soon displaced in their minds by the requirements of their own work.  Only to those who had power did the draw of the unfamiliar mean something substantial.

One time, as Felix came out of a bow, he looked out and saw an auspicious couple in the third row and thought, “Ha! I bet that’s my mark.” The pair was made of a very fat man, easily identified as wealthy if not truly noble, who had a jovial look, and a very young and beautiful blonde girl who any streetwise person would recognize as a highly paid prostitute, or at least an escort hired to provide someone with pleasant company and a good view. As he rose out of the final bow at the end of the show he detected a faint smile on her lineless face and laughed to himself, “Looks like she’s been given the same mark.”

*

            Felix hurried down the narrow alley, pausing to pull on his hooded black shirt, then refastening his bag to the small of his back.  He wondered if he looked more suspicious garbed from head to toe in black, as opposed to the colorful acrobat’s uniform beneath, but he knew that he was well away from eyes that would notice him as such.  He picked up the pace, moving into a full run once he felt far enough away from the central square which held the troupe’s tent.  The circus would continue for another two hours while he was doing his real job; if he was particularly efficient he could be back for the final bow, but Felix understood that it was not wise to expect both effectiveness and timeliness, even out of himself.

            He watched the closed doors in the alley wiz past his head, counting carefully the number of doors before he slipped into the next alleyway. Minalay was an ancient city, and because of its location, high up along a sloping mountain, real estate was at a premium. The people of the city built new housing wherever space could be found: against the city wall or even underneath or within its ancient foundations, outside of it on (or into) a cliff, or most often, between older existing buildings. This gave each street of the city the look of having one gigantic house, with changes of color and a variance of architecture to show where one house ended and the next began. HeFelix had even noticed a few houses barely a dozen feet wide during his planning of his route the day before, and thought that most visitors from other cities (where land itself was not so rare and expensive) would detest such living arrangements, thinking that sealing up a narrow corridor with two walls and a ceiling into a narrow house would be unfit for all but the most desparate. Felix, who spent most of his timing living out of a cramped wagon with strange fellows, thought otherwise.

            Another quirk of the city was its lack of underground sewers, which to some might suggest that the city was old enough to predate their use, though speaking of such might earn more than a glace or two from the devout. To the people that lived in Minalay, underground sewers were simply considered unnecessary, as the whole city sloped downward with the mountainside.  Gravity was usually enough to keep the sewers clear, and in an instance where it wasn’t, the frequent rains that pelted the city nearly year-round would wash the waste away.  There were, however, a few inevitable stretches where the slope wasn’t quite true, and the sewers would pool up. Felix turned a corner and found himself running down one such alley, pulling his hood against his mouth and nose to deal with the stench. I’d expect this to be some cheap property, he thought while biting back a surge of bile behind his tongue. But I suppose what you don’t pay in rent you are likely to pay in misery. Almighty!

            After another quick turn he saw his destination: a large manor perched at the top of a steep hill. By the time he reached it he was nearly out of breath. He looked down the hill as he waited for his breath to slow, and took comfort in knowing that the road back would be almost entirely downhill. The house looked much more ominous in the moonlight than it had the sunlight, and the paler light made it look taller, the wall around it older and more robust. No lights were shining in the visible windows. Felix concluded that the owner might have used the prime tickets for the exotic circus his contact had supposedly sent. He smiled, thinking his mark might have already watched him that night. Around the top of the wall was a tight line of iron spikes, glistening slightly with polished edges in the white light, curved toward the street to repel anyone foolhardy enough to attempt climbing over. The brightness of the moon was not something Felix had considered when setting off, as on the jog there the tall and tightly stacked buildings had obscured the light and made everything darker than it would be. Staring out from the edge of the alleyway he knew that we would be very exposed on his approach to the wall. He thought back to the previous day, very glad he had taken the time to case out the immense mansion and plot out his actions. He relaxed, remembering that despite the exposure of the street, the buildings between which he was standing had no windows facing toward the mansion. 

His breath finally slowed and the pulse in head lessened. He checked the tightness of his shoes, belt, and bag, looked out the long and wide street for any passers-by, and bolted.  His soft-soled shoes made only very slight footfalls on the stone street, and if anyone were near and keen enough to listen, all they would have heard distinctly was the faint sound of breathing.  He sprinted at the wall and leapt up at it, pushing hard against its ragged edifice with one foot, and exploding away and up.  He reached up as he did this and grabbed two of the iron prongs that stuck out from the top of the wall, suddenly relaxing and letting his feet dangle far above the street.  He then began to swing back and forth.  Once he got close to the wall he began pushing off from it with his toes.  Finally in one great burst he swung himself over the sharp ends of the spikes, his momentum pausing for but a fleeting second as his plank-stiff body stood feet-up above the iron spikes before he fell to the other side. He hit the wall hard with his toes, which absorbed enough of the impact that his body and face did not slam into the stone, then he relaxed an hung again, this time on the inside of the wall, his face nearly against the wall.

He looked around him to take in what was not visible from the street: A large yard (which seemed a dreadful luxury in Minalay) with a very well kept garden, a fountain, and under a bough of a small tree, a dog house. Shit! Felix thought to himself with the understanding that dogs were often more perceptive (and noisier) guardians than people. At the same he smiled, knowing that things worth taking were often well guarded. He wasn’t officially permitted to steal beyond that for which he had been contracted, but he often did anyway as time allowed, knowing that even if it was not condoned, it was at least partly expected.  The jewelry and odd trinkets he stole were easily sold at the circus’s next stop, and he always put the “earnings” (as he called them) into his “retirement fund,” which for him was a heavy chest half of the way filled with gold.

Hanging over the wall he weighed his options with the dog.  The edge of the house was too far away to jump, as he hung at a wide stretch between the wall and the mansion. If he dropped, his landing would be in darkness and on unknown terrain. He chose to drop, pushing off from the wall and falling into darkness. A soft moisture met his feet and he tumbled on the soft, well-mowed lawn. He looked quickly back toward the dog house to see nothing stirring, and began to relax. He took one extra step and heard something crack loudly. Craning his head toward the noise, he saw a crow flying away from branch as it fell from one of the small oaks in the garden. Nasty coincidence. His heart leapt into his throat as he turned toward the dog house, his muscles tensing for a quick escape.

What emerged from the darkened opening of the dog house, which looked much like a miniature of the mansion, was not what Felix would have considered a dog.  It was tiny, with a fluffy tail and a mane around its squashed face. It came running up to him and began to wag its tail happily. It was a toy dog: the fancy of many nobleman, which were valued not for their usefulness, but their beauty. He thanked his luck that this was not a variety that liked to bark. He bent down and began to pet the dog.

“Good boy,” he whispered, “Do you know where the bedroom is?”  The dog continued to wag its tail and began licking Felix’s hand. “No matter, any gentleman would pick the room facing south for his bedroom, eh pup?” He casually walked toward the southernmost corner of the house.   The house was made of large cut stone, as old as the wall outside, which is to say very old indeed, and was covered in ivy.  There were lots of little cracks and footholds among the stones and the foliage was strong, which made climbing up very easy. Though other men might have seen such a feat as impossible, Felix found it trivial, and within a matter of seconds he had reached the top floor.

On the third story he was able to stand on a piece of wood trim, judged by its strength and hardness to be added a long time after the house proper was built, that jutted out from the stone about three inches and hold himself up to the window. What he saw inside was a very large bedroom which included an entire library and sitting area on one side. On a table by one of the windows sat the oddment for which he had come. He was happy to see that the windows were unlocked and unbarred, and rotated in their middle, letting him avoid the awkwardness of pulling open a window which only swung outward whilst standing on a toe-length ledge. He slipped in face first, landing on the soft carpet inside on his hands before pulling his feet in from the window.  Once inside he noticed that the room displayed a level of wealth that he had not expected, even from a rich man with a garden in a city like Minalay. The bed frame and the frames on the paintings were enriched with gold leaf, the bed and sitting furniture were upholstered in shiny silk, and all the ornaments of the room, from the lanterns to the inkwell, were cast in silver. He wondered if might not be robbing a merchant, but the child of some very well-off duke, or even the bastard son of a king. I’m not paid to respect birth and title you sir, whoever you might be, have something someone else wants very badly, he thought as he stood up.

The object he was contracted to acquire, which he now examined with curiosity, was apparently called a “microscope.”  Felix had no real idea how it was used, but knew enough from the brief he was given what it should look like, and even if he had been given nothing in the way of information he would have chosen this as the correct article based entirely on its strange appearance. He had never seriously studied any of the scriptures, but had lived enough in the world to know that this was technology not found in the canon of any deity. It was made of brass and glass and steel, but he was sure neither Ferrul nor Silus had provided any direction to the church for its construction. It was, however, bigger than expected considering the prefix “micro” and barely fit into his bag. The top barrel of brass still stuck out of the opening as he gave up on stuffing it inside and drew the strings around the opening taught. 

“Now what was the second thing?” Felix thought to himself.  He remembered the missive he had been handed back in Haroux:

Besides acquiring the instrument itself, we have reason to believe that the subject in question also has possession of a bound set of notes, detailing the dimensions etc., radii etc., materials etc., and construction methods etc. of the device, not penned in the subject’s hand, and it is imperative we recover this as well.  

The table was free of any paper, bound or unbound, and Felix turned to the large bookcase at the end of the room feeling a strange mix of humor and despair. Fitting that I should think of getting back for the final bow only to be forced to find a needle in a haystack. He tried to think of how he might narrow the search without checking each book.  First he looked for anything that was bound without a spine, but each book had a spine. Next he looked for any hand-written labels, but every book that had a label was printed. He decided his best chance was to check all the books without anything printed on their spine at all, hoping that he could find the text before the owner returned home from the circus.  The search quickly as he opened each book, evaluated its contents, then cast it down upon the ground. Cooking. No. Casting. No. That’s a novella. He chuckled at a roughly bound book. This is a sex guide. He flipped through deeper pages. And a bad one. No. Within minutes he had reached the end of the books.

Well, either it’s disguised as a different book or he’s got it somewhere else, he thought.  He started opening up drawers and tossing the articles aside. After the books, he no longer cared about leaving an unsuspicious scene. He pried open a jewelry box on the bedside table, which contained a fine set of rings and necklaces (which he put in his pockets; he might have been in a slight state of panic but he was still practical). It was while he was shoving the last gold ring down his pants pockets that he noticed something touch his leg. Wheeling about, he saw nothing, but looking down, he saw a familiar pair of brown eyes set in a puffy mane looking up at him.

Before he could ask the dog how he got in, his question was answered by a crash at the upper stair landing and a flurry of laughing.

        “Not to worry, not to worry! It’s only a few hundred years old, I’ve dozens more!” A brash voice said just outside the bedroom door. Felix had no time to think. His heart was pounding and he shook with adrenaline. He couldn’t think straight about what to do, and so he did what many scared and desperate people have done before: he hid under the bed.

More to come soon. Thanks for reading!  

-DVS

Words or Phrases that Should Immediately Set Off Your B.S. Detector

1. Equality-  There’s such thing as equal before the law (in concept, not in practice), but whenever somebody uses “equality” as a justification for something, you know the actions will involve theft, revocation of rights, or punishment for success and subsidy of failure.

2. Democracy- Even a casual student of the humanities knows how well democracy worked out for Socrates. Besides its serious shortcomings as a means of political organization, the idea of the majority rule is used as justification for a host of atrocities including foreign wars, theft through taxation, and as with Socrates, murder.  It, along with its more insidious cousin known as the republic (which is what the US actually is) has led to the preservation of slavery and then Jim Crow laws, the ascent of Hitler and the murder of 6 million individuals, and the horrors of central banking.  Just because the majority of legal voters likes something doesn’t make it moral.

3. Social Justice- This is usually used to justify the theft of property from a party in order for the supposed crime of their ancestors, under the assumption that the result will provide peace and equality.  Of course never addressed is how you intend to foster peace and equality within the resentment of theft.

4. Class/proletariat/ 99%- In the United States, class is mostly an illusion crafted by socialists to make you resent individuals who have been productive.  The reality is that age is most associated with income and wealth, and the young usually end up moving into the middle and upper “classes” by the time they retire. The induced struggle then becomes between people who have already produced wealth, and those who have yet to produce any.

5. The American Dream- The idea of satisfied wealth, home ownership, and children is, believe it or not, outside of the scope of desire for many Americans. This combined with the odd transformation of the results of hard work, thrift, and savings into a mountain of unsustainable debt attached to your home makes this one of the most illusory concepts in the modern mind.  Look for it to be used in a sorrowful manner by those who feel entitled to comfort and by politicians to invoke a greater theft of your money to subsidize home debt.

6. Christian Nation- Alright, time for a term from the right.  People love to call America a Christian Nation when they are attempting to upend the separation of church and state by instituting prayer in public schools, preventing the building of mosques, preventing the teaching of evolution, and a host of other repressive irrational causes.  Don’t expect to enter into a reasonable debate with the people who champion this cause; the appeal to the authority of the founders as justification for the appeal to the authority of God is a logical fallacy you cannot hope to overcome.

7. Hero- In the classical sense heroes were characters like Hercules or Jason that did impossible feats. Today the category of Hero has been expanded to include all people who use force on behalf of the government as well as anyone who has ever done something nice for another human (or puppy) ever.  Being called a Hero is half a step up from being called “nice,” only I generally don’t paint an entire profession of people whose job it is to kill or repress others as “nice.” It is essentially a meaningless term used to golf-clap for people who don’t actually produce anything for society (and of course, their families).

8. Needy- This term is usually used when a third party takes it upon themselves to determine someone’s needs.  What they almost always need is more of your money.  Of course, the assumption is that you don’t have any needs.  You make 24,000 dollars a year.  You’re rich.

9. Hungry- Same as needy, only worse.  How do you determine who is hungry?  Do you go around and ask them? You can’t use the term “starving” because people die of that;  there would be bodies. Did you know there’s a strong correlation between food stamps and obesity? Just think about that.  Even bums, who spend your change on booze, and can’t get food stamps, somehow manage to feed themselves. 

Sources: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=do-food-stamps-lead-to-obesity-2009-08-11

10. Diversity- Maddox once did a much more thorough debunking of this term, but I will affirm him:  People almost always mean diversity of appearance, not thought, because of the belief that all brown people will represent some “black perspective,” and all white people will represent some “white perspective.”  You could get a Thomas Sowell for that diversity hire, and add him to a room of white republicans and not see very much change in the output of thought.

Maddox articles: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=stock_photos

 http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=your_stupid_ideas

11. Rape Culture/Patriarchy- A set of popular feminist terms used to cast all males into the role of predator, taking sex from unwilling women because of the dominating effects of their patriarchal culture.  The reality is that most men are unwilling to have sex without consent; indeed, it is primarily women who control the occurrences of sex and with whom.  The few exceptions to this are generally viewed as abhorrent.  The actual tension attempting to be described by the term “rape culture,” is just an objection to how interaction between the sexes has evolved.  Society’s typical placement of women is as selectors and rejecters in the case of sex, as opposed to the male experience of pursuit and peacocking.  If you are a man, you don’t have to apologize for having sex.  If you are a woman, you are allowed to enjoy it.

More to come some other time!

A Short Exposition on Bullying

What is bullying?

Bullying is classified a power relationship.  It is one of fear, and aggression, and violence.  It is one person being marginalized by another, being subjected to their will on some level, whether that will results in theft or malevolent degradation, or just plain violence.

Bullying is a more horrific experience than you may realize.

My childhood experience with my peers is one of violence.  Not necessarily as a “victim” per se, but as part of a general atmosphere.  Children sought to hurt each other, and they used far more than words; they used fists and knees and baseball bats.  For a teacher who sees children teasing, they may think sympathetically of the child’s feeling of isolation or their hurt self-esteem, but for a child involved a real bullying experience it is from their perspective probably closer to Stephen King’s It, in which the bully carries a knife and tries to carve his name into the fat kid’s belly. 

Bullying is nothing new or special. 

Part of the curse of my photographic memory is my ability to remember childhood, and I can tell you in more than 20 years nothing has really changed, and from the witness of my elders the past century has brought no progress.  The internet gives additional opportunities, nothing more or less, in the same way that congregating at a mall does. Children have always sought to exert power over others; the real question is why.  From my perspective it is quite obvious.

It is we who create bullies.

Recognizing the fact that behavior is learned and nobody is born to be cruel (well, perhaps some people are unable to be anything but sociopaths, but that is another debate), it is we as teachers, parents, and citizens (for lack of a better word) that have created bullies.  Children witness and are subjected to unequal power relationships every day with and between the adults around them.  They are coerced into attending school and forced every day and every hour to submit themselves to the power of teachers, parents and administrators. If they resist, object, or question it, they are punished.  Children are the least free people in America besides those in prison (who have to deal with their own variety of bullies- the kind who violate with more than words).  Is it any wonder they lash out?  That they imitate the conditions to which they themselves have been subjected?  Creating power over another person is a way to feel free; to feel like you are able to finally assume the role of the adults around you; that you are not completely powerless.

Prevention of bullying is almost impossible.

In order to respond to bullying as a teacher you must first witness it.  Children, though we may think less of them, are not so foolish as risk being subjected to the negative possibilities of a power relationship between themselves and adults (in other words, punishment from adults) by bullying someone else in front of a teacher or administrator.  They will do it in the halls, bathrooms, playground, and outside of school if they must, and it is not possible for the school to monitor a child at all times.  Furthermore, children are clever enough to figure out the areas that will not be monitored. 

A child doesn't tell on a bully. They avoid it because of the inevitable reprisal that you as a teacher cannot prevent.  They avoid it because they feel, and are likely correct, that you are incapable of protecting them.

Bullying is here to stay.

It is unlikely that the situations that create bullying will ever be fully resolved, at least as long as education is compulsory.  The final escape for both those who bully, and those who are bullied, which is escape from the locality that creates it, will likely never be an avenue that will open to either party.  The end of compulsory education, though it might go a long way toward reducing bullying and providing meaningful avenues of escape and prevention, is not likely to happen in my lifetime.

How do we save our children?

We can’t save them.  We must prepare them.  Children are not born equipped with the tools (physical or otherwise) to defend against violence or to commit violence, and their egos are not shod in iron and impenetrable.  All you can do is build up your children enough that they don’t suffer so much from the ills of others.  Create enough pride, will and self-esteem in them that they do not feel the need to bully, even in situation of being bullied, and at the same time take away the impact of that attempt at a power relationship.

The Heartbeat of the Emperor

Twelve years and thousands of lives later, the war drums of the empire beat no more softly than they did when shifting face of the oligarchy was turned upon its own wounds.  It is the heartbeat of the emperor: vain, ceaseless, changeless, and unwilling to go gently into the night and allow men to be free. 

The noble, gods unto themselves, play games with the lives of lesser men, with pride their only prize.  Honor and glory call the freemen to bind themselves and give their sword to those who would be kings.  The thrall tend the fields, fighting for the whetstone, and so to be better slaves to their mighty lords. 

The sun rises.  The sun sets.  Nothing changes.

The heartbeat calls ever for the minds, flesh, and souls of men.  Is it any wonder we worship death above all else?  For, being but men upon a cursed earth, where shall we find peace but in the house of God? We are uncertain, of course, for none of us know how to cut the runes and make the hanged man come down and talk to us of the hereafter.  

I know not where we go, but for the men of peace, the men of self-will and determination, the men of love and passion, the men of artistry and creation, the freemen, I know this:  our home is not here.