Mind the Gap

This entry was originally posted on 10 February 2003 at 12:15 p.m.

When will the waif aesthetic die?

While i was in Boston on Saturday, my girlfriend took me to the Gap so she could look for some clothes for work. Now, i'm well-proportioned but stocky (read: built like a small linebacker), and i don't think i've ever been able to fit into any of the Gap's clothes. This doesn't bother me much, since i don't particularly care for trendy clothing. Give me a pair of jeans and a loose tee-shirt, and i'm pretty happy.

So i was a bit surprised when we walked in there and found that their in-store sizes don't go above 16. And that's only for a limited number of their products; some only go up to 14. If you order online, you can get up to size 20--but only for a limited selection of their products. Upon learning this, my reaction was unfavorable to say the least.

I stood uncomfortably beside one of the tables as she gathered a few articles of clothing to try on. Obediently, i sat on a chair and waited for her in the fitting area. And i watched. I saw a few young women walk in who looked as though they'd have as much luck as i would with Gap clothing. And yet they persisted. I saw another young woman--who was quite thin--come out of one fitting room, wearing something much too tight for her. And it made me wonder what the attraction is to skin-tight clothing.

Considering that nearly 20% of people in the US are obese (not to mention the percentage of people who are merely overweight), i can't understand why places like the Gap continue to limit their in-store sizes to 16 and under for women. I also can't understand why the unattainable heroin chic still reigns.

Perhaps it's because we are a nation of rich, complacent people who, unhappy with our uncultured and easy lives, turn to Hostess and M&M Mars to drown our sorrows. Perhaps it's because we live in a nation where we are expected to become more productive on a daily basis, and where technology allows us to multitask at rates approaching the speed of thought--and because of this we no longer have the time to pack a healthy lunch or prepare a dinner that wasn't prepackaged and microwaveable.

Whatever the reason, and regardless of whether or not it's a healthy one, the ugly truth is that the United States is steadily growing heavier--and yet our clothing lines are not. As someone who is naturally big (i tend to keep a fairly healthy diet), i find this problematic. As someone who has seen the nation grow fatter, i find this psychologically damaging. Our reliance upon network television for entertainment is only feeding a desire to use unhealthy--or even dangerous--means to attain a body type that applies to about 5% of the population--a body type promulgated by chains like the Gap. Furthermore, this body type isn't problematic only because it's moving farther out of reach for most of us, but because it's not a healthy one in the first place.

I don't think that the US's increase in body size is a good thing. But i also don't think that making people feel worse about who they are because they don't fit into a popular image--an image that is ultimately unhealthy no matter where you are--is a good way of changing the situation. Better education about food, nutrition, and excercise in schools might be one way to combat it. Reducing the availability of soda, candies, and fast food in schools (and elsewhere) might be another way. But promoting an image (one in which the ideal is less than 10% body fat) that has had, thus far, no evolutionary value is a mistake.

This argument is muddled, i know. Let me clarify. There are two prongs here--the first is that the image promoted by chains like the Gap is one that is unattainable for most people in general, and one that does not confer any evolutionary advantage (outside of attraction, which is variable anyway). The second is that people in the US are growing steadily larger--to the point where that (already unhealthy) image is even less attainable. Both roads are psychologically damaging.

Here's what i would like to see: a fashion designer whose mottos are "Because We Know You're Human" and "Leave Something To the Imagination."

Convergence

This entry was originally posted on 14 January 2003 at 2:20 p.m. Outdated links have been removed and replaced with updated ones.

That National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce report on NBIC technology has inspired an entire conference dedicated to exploiting the possibilities of these scientific frontiers. As always, our money-driven economy is inviting academics to attend for the sole purpose of picking their brains to find lucrative ways to invent new technologies that cross nano-, bio-, info-, and cogno- disciplinary boundaries (or, at least, take advantage of the gradual convergence of these fields).

Moneygrubbing aside, i noticed something on the webpage devoted to the workshops--in one of the workshop descriptions, the blurb reads,

This will be a highly multidisciplinary workshop with respect to the complexity of the biological systems being studied and with respect to the technological approaches used to understand how these different sensory systems function.

This made me stop and think: why is it that we try our best to capture the organic nature of biology in the imagery of technology? Shouldn't we be doing the complete opposite--shouldn't we be trying to understand technology in organic terms, instead of understanding biology in technological terms?

It all seems a little backwards to me. Organisms are much more efficient (not to mention versatile, adaptable, and environmentally compatible) than machines. It would make so much more sense to make our machines more organic than to make our bodies more mechanical.

That's humanity for you: never quite satisfied with nature as it stands.

Rethinking mental illness

This entry was originally posted on 7 January 2003 at 3:42 p.m. It has been edited to correct a minor grammatical error.

There's been a bit of talk about therapy lately among some of my acquaintances. This is my fault in part, but it's caused me to think more closely about my experiences as a psychiatric patient. Here are things i can honestly say:

1. Had i not been nagged to see a psychologist almost four years ago, i would not be alive today. Back then i was out of control to the point where intervention was necessary, and without someone to help me regain that control, i would not have lived another month.

2. Not all people who are in therapy are whiny and self-indulgent people with decent lives who simply don't see it. But some of them are. And they give a really bad name to those of us who have ever needed to be taught how to manage the kinds of symptoms that keep one from being productive, or that lead to self-destruction.

3. Too many people go into psychiatric units in hospitals convinced that a short stay will cure them of their ailments. This is one of the saddest misconceptions i have ever seen. Short-term hospital stays are geared toward creating stability and setting up long-term treatment on the outside. They create a safe place for people who are in danger of hurting themselves or others, a place where they can regain some semblance of control, but they do not solve the problem.

4. Medication is the way to go for some people. But in some cases (often mood or anxiety disorders), medication treats the symptoms but not the disease.

5. No hospital, no doctor, and no medication will ever "cure" someone. The patient must heal himself. It's not an easy road, but the patient is the only person who can be responsible for this, because the patient is the only person who understands the experience and can take the steps that are necessary for healing.

Cultural Entropy

This entry was originally posted on 31 December 2002 at 12:14 p.m. This is a slightly abridged version of the original.

Last night, while reading Marcel Möring's In Babylon (which is, so far, absolutely brilliant), i came across a passage in which the character Uncle Herman describes something called 'cultural entropy.' I nearly dropped the book when i read it--when i attended BU for graduate school in archaeology (that only lasted for the fall 1998 semester), i thought of the same idea, called it the same thing.

A quick search on Google found that he and i aren't the only ones to have thought of it. Thing is, it doesn't seem as though anyone has clearly defined this phenomenon.

So, for the record, i'd like to state my version of Cultural Entropy Theory:
1. Uniformity. All cultures change over time, although the rate of change may not be uniform across (or even within) cultures. Changes in environment, discoveries of hitherto unknown properties of plants, animals, and chemical compounds, and advances in technology all affect the rate of change for a given culture. Eventually, a culture may appear to have reached equilibrium--but, as with the evolution of species, such stasis does not last forever.

2. Complexity. The direction of such change is always toward greater complexity. At some point--perhaps due to some triggering event--the rate of change (and, hence, the complexity of the culture) will steadily increase.

3. Increase. The complexity of a given culture, combined with the increasing rate of change, will eventually reach a point at which the culture will be unable to sustain itself in a coherent manner. Certain aspects of the culture will then contradict other aspects, leaving the people in a state of ethical, philosophical, and social uncertainty.

4. Entropy. The culture, no longer able to function effectively, disintegrates. In the greater scheme of its relations to other cultures, it is no longer able to interact as a unified state.

5. Absorption. The entropic culture's constituents, being human, require a certain amount of social structure or meaning in their lives. A small number may choose to attempt to retain the pre-entropic cultural practices; some might stay and build a new social order; most will emigrate to nearby cultural groups and assimilate. Those who try to retain the pre-entropic practices will most likely be unsuccessful and will probably not have the social mass needed to cohere. Those who try to create a new social order may fall prey to the same problem--although, given enough social mass, it is possible that they will succeed.

Other Key Concepts:
Cultural uniformitarianism -- Like geological uniformitarinism, cultural entropy assumes that these processes have always been and always will be in effect.

Social mass -- In order for a culture to form, there must be enough people involved in it to ensure that it can continue to exist, ideally by passing it on through offspring. Unless the threshold of social mass is exceeded, the culture will not survive.

Optional reading: Funtowitcz, S.O., & Ravetz, J.R. (1997). The poetry of thermodynamics: energy, entropy/exergy and quality. Futures, 29, pp. 791-810. (I haven't read this article, but it came up under a search of "cultural entropy" in the Social Sciences Abstracts, and the abstract looks quite good.)

Any questions?

The search continues

This entry was originally posted on 3 December 2002 at 1:21 p.m.

Lately i've been having these days where i want to surf the Web, but i can't think of anything offhand that interests me and that would have a good chance of turning up a viable hit or two on a search engine. Look up something like "truth," "reality," or "existence" on MSN or Google, and, chances are, the first fifty sites that appear won't be the philosophical treatises you had hoped you'd find.

I find this problematic, given that the Web is such a great source of potential for these kinds of things. The real problem, however, is that i am, once again, Looking For Something.

See, occasionally, i find it necessary to embark on a quest for the undefinable, intangible, Something. It lurks around the corner of every click, of every Borgesian path in the Garden of Forking Websites, of every path not taken, of every broken link. It waits patiently for someone to find it, comfortable and secure in its importance. It is some cosmic truth, some hitherto unknown connection between disparate facts, some idea (remember eidos) whose originality is both undeniable and utterly profound. It is a newly-formed kabbalah, a ray of light shining on the hidden spirituality of the electronic cosmos. It is greatness itself.

It doesn't exist.

But i go looking for it anyway, typing the names of random artifacts, principles, or historical people into search engines, hoping that one of these hits will lead to the Ultimate Something (or if not the Ultimate Something, then at least the Penultimate Something). It never does, no matter how many times i look for it, and while by now i might have given up on other searches, my hope is yet to be depleted by this one. I click away aimlessly at link after link, knowing that enlightenment is not something so easily attainable--and if it is, it shouldn't be.

After a while i usually become too bored or frustrated to continue, so i head home. But even then, i still feel as though something is missing, incomplete, waiting. It is out there and it wants to be discovered, but it has hidden itself in an electronic library as convoluted as the one at Babel that our dear Borges described (i'm beginning to realize that on days like today, it always comes back to Borges).

Perhaps the answer comes not from asking the question, but from the search itself, i think. I play a game of Freecell and ponder this for a while. Eventually, i'll toss the entire project...but deep down, i know it will come back around. And i'll be somehow fulfilled to see it again.

What is this madness?

Goth night

This entry was originally posted on 2 August 2002 at 2:24 p.m. This is a slightly abridged version of the original.

The night before last i went to ManRay in Cambridge with my friend mpr. It was a Wednesday night, which meant that all the 18+ goth types in the area were there by about 11 PM.

ManRay is an interesting place: two nights a week are devoted to either the goth crowd or the fetish/bdsm crowd, one night a week is gay night, and i can't remember what happens on the fourth night. Regardless, there's usually an interesting mix of people there.

Until this week, i've only ever been on Friday nights (Fridays alternate between five different events including Sin, Hell, 5, and two others i can't remember). I was accustomed to seeing the die-hard, i-live-my-life-in-this-costume crowd. Wednesday, however, was different.

One clarification before we move on: i am not a goth. Granted, many people who fit into the goth scene don't consider themselves goths--the movement itself seems to be characterized more by individualism than conformity. But i really don't fit into the scene: i don't know much of the music, i don't have the wardrobe, and my social circle mainly involves people who work at the restaurant, readers of certain kinds of literature, and academics or semi-academics. I've had friends (including my college roommate for two years) who are goths, but sadly, i don't have the same cultural background as they do.

But i'm fascinated by the concept of "goth." The ICA had an entire exhbition dedicated to goth art (note that i'm not using the term "gothic"--i want it to be clear that i'm not talking about art produced between the 12th and 15th centuries in Europe). I didn't get the see the exhibition, but the museum keeps a video collection of some of its stuff, which i watched with great interest--great enough that i bought the hardcover book while i was there.

I love its self-mocking sense of absurdity. I love the music, i love the focus on man as subtle monster, and i love the general oddness and intelligence of the goths that i've known. These are important things. David Lynch, for one, is a major champion of absurdity.

And this is why i had to laugh when we visited the club Wednesday night: probably a quarter to a third of the people who were there were just like us--non-goths, wearing all black, come to watch the bizarre video loop, catch some tunes, and have a couple of beers.

Toward 11 or so, most of the people were actual goths in varying costume. But what struck me most about them is that very few of them were the i-live-my-life-in-costume kind. Most of them seemed like normal folks who have this secret alter-ego. In a sense, this was disappointing. I mean, hell, what's the point of being goth if you're not living the goth life?

On the other hand, it was interesting to speculate on the things that brought this crowd together. These are the questions that darted through my head as i walked home from the T:

* What is it that defines a movement? 
* What is it that brings such an individualist crowd together? 
* How does one become a part of this crowd? 
* And why was the crowd representative of only a few subgroups?

I know, not the deepest questions in the world, but i think they have implications for any culture or subculture.

The concept of the "unnatural"

This entry was originally posted on 30 June 2002 at 9:55 a.m. This entry has been edited and slightly abridged.

Here's something that's been on my mind the last few days: the idea of something being unnatural. At work one night one of the other servers was explaining her views on dairy and meat products (of which she partakes neither), and she said something that piqued my curiosity. It was something along the lines of: Humans are the only species that drink the milk of other species, and the only species that continues to drink milk into adulthood, and this is unnatural.

This statement rattled around my brain for a few days, enticing some older and rustier neurons to start firing more rapidly again. And while the neurons were firing, it occurred to me that her statement was logically bizarre--if not wrong altogether. Here's why: The statement is that
Premise 1: H, a species, does X.
Premise 2: No other species does X.
Conclusion: Therefore, X (and, by implication, H) is unnatural.

Do you see the errors here? First off, there is no premise that states that any animal behavior must exist in more than one species in order to be "natural." Second, there are plenty of species out there that exibit peculiar or unique behaviors. Seahorses, for example: male seahorses are responsible for incubating their unhatched eggs--a job that the females of most (if not all) other species handles. This behavior is extremely unusual, if not unique, to seahorses. Is it unnatural? Well, it happens in nature, so how can it be unnatural?

It occurred to me that, by the same logic, there is nothing that humans do that is not in our nature. There is nothing that any species can do that is not, in some way, natural. The idea that something can be unnatural is a human construct: nature cannot decree that something is unnatural, it just doesn't make sense.

So then, is it natural for humans to believe that something can be unnatural? You bet.

Gender in America

This entry was originally posted on 2 January 2002 at 4:08 p.m.

Wow. Wow, wow wow. I just had my first class of the quarter--Gender and Justice--and it was excellent. I think there are about eight students in the class, two of which are undergrads, and one of which is a Ph.D. student from another department (and the only male student).

Most people might be turned off by the idea of a gender class, but i think it's going to be really good and will make me think more carefully about things. The professor comes from an objective-feminist perspective, which should make it all the more interesting. It's sad that many people are uncomfortable with this sort of class because they expect it to be taught by a raging hard-core anti-man sort of teacher; i think our professor will be particularly good at bringing a more balanced approach to the material, based on things she said today.

Anyway, the focus of this wasn't supposed to be teaching styles; it was supposed to be the film we watched. It's called Killing Us Softly 3 and if you haven't seen it, watch it. As soon as possible. It's very short--about 35 minutes--and it's just a lecture with visuals given by a woman called Jean Kilbourne. She takes an even-handed, gentle manner and discusses women in advertisements. It was wonderful. It's not the sort of thing that will make men feel guilty--but it will make everyone pay much closer attention to how advertisements work and how they affect our culture.

What was particularly interesting was that women are often portrayed in vulnerable, innocent-yet-sexual ways (in terms of clothing, poses, and body language--and all of this is enhanced by copy in some ads), while men are regularly portrayed as aggressive. This in and of itself is no great revelation; people have known about this for some time, and it's readily obvious to anyone who really thinks about these things. What was interesting about it was that it made me consider why this difference exists.

In other cultures, where gender differences are clearly defined and more strictly enforced, women can be powerful and revered among women if not among men. In the US there is plenty of gender-typing in terms of roles, but they are not always clear. It is rare to hear someone state explicitly that a woman cannot have a certain job or that she must do certain types of things (like housework)--but these ideas are still pervasive. In our rush toward gender equality, previous generations failed to repair the damage; they changed our ways only by changing the language we use and what we do and do not talk about--and as a result, we have internalized many of the stereotypes and attitudes that we wish to destroy.

In this sense, gender discrimination and typing is almost worse here--for two reasons. The first is that we consider ourselves enlightened, so we think that, given this, we would not practice discrimination of that sort. We are patently wrong, and this is because of the second reason: the discrimination and typing that does exist has become naturalized through the internalization process. That is, we practice these things on a daily basis and we don't realize that we're doing it. In cultures where this is overt, you can ask a man why some woman cannot do X, and he'll say, "Because she's a woman" and maybe even elaborate on why, traditionally, women don't do X. In our culture, we are so accustomed to these internalized practices that we are rarely able to come up with the answer that some woman cannot do X simply because she is a woman and we believe that women cannot do X.

This is dangerous. It is bias in its most destructive form--because it is so subtle, so ingrained, and so hard for us to see. What is even more frightening about it is that we are doing the same things with race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

We think of ourselves as belonging to the most egalitarian culture in the world. In reality we are, with all good intentions, setting ourselves up for the opposite. Our downfall will be our inability to see the social problems that we have pushed under the rug by rushing through balanced discourse and consideration because we are impatient to solve the problems.

Slow down, America.

Street preachers

This entry was originally posted on 2 December 2001 at 12:10 p.m.

Interesting day yesterday. My day off. Went to see Harry Potter again (just as good the second time around!), but all sorts of strange things happened before and after the movie.

I had gotten off the train at Charles/MGH to take a few photos of the Charles Street Prison, which, i'm sad to say, is being demolished. After that, i wandered through Beacon Hill and down to Park Street Station, where i intended to catch the train to the Hynes/ICA stop, so i could wander up Newbury Street (lots of interesting shops there--including the Trident bookstore). But before i got into the station, i noticed a man lecturing in the plaza. There was something unusual about him. Not about him lecturing; there must be a hundred street preachers in Boston and Cambridge. After watching him a few minutes, i realized what was so strange was that he seemed completely aware of his surroundings, of his audience, and of the fact that there were several police officers off to one side. Many street preachers don't notice these things; they tend to be the ones who are a bit delusional or psychotic. This guy seemed pretty together, though. So i decided to wait and see whether the police hassled him at all.

After he finished speaking, we chatted for a few minutes. No, the police never bothered him. He had an advanced degree in Theology. He wasn't sure whether he enjoyed doing his work--apparently, i was the first person who had ever asked him. He asked me a few questions about my own beliefs, and then we shook hands and parted ways. It was a little surreal--especially since i had been thinking a lot about The Novel i'm trying to write (in my nonexistent spare time), and this seemed to give me another facet to add to it. I'll talk about The Novel some other time, however, when i can explain everything without boring you to death.

I went off and did my thing, made my way up Newbury Street, and eventually found a local theater that was still showing Harry Potter (there was only one, surprisingly). After the film, i walked back toward Park Street Station, and happened upon a conflict in the plaza. Eventually the conflict escalated to a full-blown fight, which was broken up by the arrival of an unseemly number of Boston Police. I stuck around for a while, wondering whether i'd be questioned, but i wasn't. So i talked to one of the people who was involved in the conflict. Turns out he was a former member of the Crips and had just finished nine years in federal prison. He had turned his life around, had his wife and three kids with him, and was doing his best to stay out of trouble. I'm usually a skeptic about human nature, but there was something about the way this guy explained his former life to me that sounded plain and truthful. He had given up a life of robbery and drugs, making $4500 a week, to take care of his kids. What turned him around? He had been shot in the head. For all that i generally doubt people's sincerity, i couldn't help but believe him. Why? Because he wasn't repentant, he wasn't guilty. He was sort of proud of his old life, but just as proud of his new one. And that, in my mind, is a reflection of the honesty of street culture.

The irony of this entire episode was that it happened about 100 feet away from where the 'preacher' had been lecturing that afternoon.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog! If you're already familiar with my blogging, it's good to see you again. And if you're not, i hope you'll stick around for a while.

The first batch of entries here will consist of several older entries from my original blog over at Diaryland. These entries are the ones of which i'm proudest.

For the time being, i'll be using this space as a place to post my "best-of," but it is possible that i'll eventually use this blog as my primary and (hopefully) permanent home. In any case, i welcome comments and discussion on all entries, old and new alike. I hate posting into a vacuum--i find that my ideas languish when they're not nurtured with discussion.

So once again, welcome! I hope you enjoy your visit.