Author: Dean

There’s a mental disease I’ve been aware of for decades, mostly without realizing it, sometimes afflicted with it myself. I need a clever name for it, but for now I will call it “pointless definitional pedantry”, or PDP. I observe it frequently in political speech and Web comments, but it can be found almost everywhere. I think PDP may be related to “math envy” and “science envy”. The beauty of math is that starting with a few basic assumptions and using only logic, a vast and useful quiver of conceptual tools can be developed. The beauty of science is that by cleverly setting up reproducible situations, taking careful measurements, and applying imagination, logic, math, and statistics, we can socially construct facts that anybody (suitably informed and equipped) can confirm or improve. The problem with PDP and the envies is that these techniques don’t really apply to social and cultural disputes.

A PDP example: Back in the HoB era I hung out with folks, some of whom were not shy about how proud and superior they felt to be known as Libertarians. It was quite popular among some of these ‘Berts (as I call them here; an analogy to “Karen” is probably germane in the larger context, if not specifically to the folks of my history) to “prove” such “facts” that, contrary to how they present, environmentalists “actually” hate humanity. Their arguments were invariably based on boutique, specious, PDP style definitions; charisma and obstinacy armed with practiced platitudes: rhetoric, the art of making the bad look good. Another example: defining “alive”, as if there were a single sentence that could capture all of biology. If it is having the ability to reproduce, a worker bee or a red blood cell isn’t alive. Having the ability to move independently? Mushrooms aren’t alive but self-driving cars are. Is a virus alive? A seed? An ant colony? A bacterial specimen frozen at -80° C? The problem with defining life is that every simple definition has exceptions. Religion provides a seeming infinity of examples. One could almost define religion (see what I did there? note the use of “almost”) as an enterprise dedicated to applying PDP, with ever-increasing vigor, ever-more-inappropriately.

The point here is that argumentation about issues that involve vast amounts of interaction among complex agents, in the context of trying to completely define inherently vague terms, is a sucker’s game. If you go along with demands for perfectly defined terms, you have already lost what isn’t really an argument. Words don’t have exact meanings, concepts are metaphors, and the structure of language makes it impossible to prevent paradoxes. One medicine for PDP is a reliance upon hallmarks rather than definitions. Any complex system that possesses many of the hallmarks of life is alive. Obviously, care must be taken with hallmarks, and the goal must be consensus rather than strict agreement.

Back to the ‘Berts. Given the magnitude of effort needed to (rather, to attempt to: they are nothing if not recalcitrant (q.v. Brandolini’s Law)) correct their misrepresentations and oversimplifications, most people, myself included, would rather cut their losses in exasperation, unfortunately gifting them with the emotion of having “won” the “argument”, an illusion often convincing to a credulous audience. Another PDP trick ‘Berts seem to love is the secret use of boutique definitions, which are pulled out for a ‘gotcha’ at the last minute. Just attempting to get a ‘Bert to come to terms usually invites exasperation, again virtually guaranteeing them their victory illusions. The tragedy of our era: we’ve all got things to keep working on, but we need to figure out – and implement! a time and effort self-tax! – strategies and tactics to combat the ‘Bertshit.

I live in a house. As with most houses, mine has a yard. Grass grows in my yard, but also way too much Glechoma hederaca (creeping charlie), Plantago major (broadleaf plantain, not the banana-like fruit), Potentilla indica (false strawberry), and others. What I’d really like is for there to be some kind of innovative farming outfit that would come use my property for their organic produce business, but I doubt that would be viable – farming, especially organic farming – is already low margin when done on dedicated fully owned centralized farmland. What I should do is implement some kind of lawn replacement concept utilizing native shrubs, flowers, and ground cover. What I end up doing is procrastinating and infrequently whacking the lawn with a lawn mower. None of my weeds responds very well to manual removal, and even if I went all out and did a presumptively one-time herbicide treatment followed by grass seeding, the neighboring yards are all equally infested and it wouldn’t be long until my efforts proved futile.

I live on a planet. As with most inhabited planets, mine has continents. Some smart, nice, helpful, cooperative people live on these continents, but also way too many Factus denialistus (generic Qonservatives), Nutjobia fuck-you-ive-got-mineii (Quibertarians; take Qonservative denialism and square it), and Outright nazifascistia (Republiqans; GQP types for whom F. den and N. fuc are way too intellectual). What I’d really like is for there to be some kind of innovative knowledge transference device that could identify and correct the pathologies that are going on in whatever has replaced the nervous systems of these defective enormities, but I doubt that would be viable – whatever it is interprets facts and logic as enemies and mounts an allergic reaction to them. What I should do is figure out some way to engage socially and/or politically and at least try to nudge some of these QNuts towards some kind of sanity. None of these disease vectors responds very well to traditional communications using verifiable information and reasoning, but even if I invented some kind of mental judo they would no doubt realize that my efforts are a threat to their pathology, and the number of their contagious co-infecteds is so great that my efforts would surely prove futile.

Note: in case you non-ironically style yourself Conservative, Libertarian, Republican or GOP member, you might think my barbs above are aimed at you. Not necessarily so! However, if you strut about parroting QNut codewords and dog whistles; if you fancy that you argue in good faith by sneering at environmentalists, feminists, progressives, liberals, etc.; if you get off on “triggering the Libs”, I would ask why you endeavor to appear so Nazi-adjacent. I myself used to be a registered Green, but only because I had read that some law in my state required that a political party have a minimum number of members to be officially recognized, and the Greens, despite their kookiness, are usually the only party brave enough to argue in favor of real environmental reform. I even switched my registration to Democrat once the Greens had eroded to official non-recognition, but only to vote for Bernie in the primaries, knowing that Hillary (cue kneeless knee-jerk QNut spit-gasms here; let us pause while I wipe off the spluttering blow-by spewing from my screen through that series of tubes that is the internet) would win. I say this to portray that I am aware of tactical reasons for party or group membership. I may not be aiming at you particularly, but maybe you unwittingly (not in the same sense that the QNuts are unwitting) make yourself a target. Perhaps you should distance yourself from, rather than sidle up to, the poisonous fucks you strive to resemble.

NB: this is a US-centric post. The Qs (Republiqans, Quibertarians, Qump supporters…): they sneer at us fact-using logical folk (liberals, progressives, feminists, environmentalists…), with their hate-speech catch-phrases (adjacent to such terms as “hate-America-first-Liberal”). Whatever. Our hatred is for stuff that’s actually wrong, but characteristic of the US as it actually is (“if right, to be kept right, if wrong, to be set right”). If you already fancy the QSA to be perfeqt, setting things right is tantamount to treason, I guess. Here are some of my hatreds.

Shitty t-shirts. I buy t-shirts wherever I travel. Although most of my travel is domestic, an unrepresentative proportion of my t-shirts is Canadian or European. Now, I don’t buy more shirts than usual when traveling internationally. I don each one in turn, so they get relatively equal wear, and as soon as I notice that one has too many holes, I toss it. I conclude that the American shirts are simply low quality. I bought one of my oldest shirts more than twenty years ago in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. I visit Glacier National Park every three years, but have few surviving shirts from there, although I buy several each time.

Cars: a vile public nuisance. In the part of Germany where I lived for two years, bicycling is practical for commuting, shopping, and recreation. Bike paths are everywhere. Because the driving population comprises people who are also cyclists, the biker-resentment that is obvious and prevalent among US drivers does not obtain. Now that I am back in the US, living in a bike-hostile city, most of my pedaling is on the stationary bike (we sometimes mount the bikes on a car and drive them to a bike trail). I say: tax gasoline to five dollars a gallon and spend the money building separate bike lanes. But oh, the Q-tantrums that would arise.

Recycling. Where I lived in Germany, recycling was multi-stream: bio (for compost), paper/cardboard (essentially 100% recyclable), and packaging (needing more complicated recycling). The small left-over fraction is actual garbage. Granted, a trivial amount of intelligence and effort are required to successfully recycle in Germany. In the US, where using one’s brain and not shitting in everybody’s living room is considered (by Q’s) to be communist socialist liberty-hatred, even where recycling is supposedly available it has to be dumbed down to “single stream”, which doesn’t really work. A few (“liberty” loving!) defeqtors tossing unrecyclable crap into the stream taints it so that it has to be relegated to landfills.

Liberian Units. The US is officially metric, as the yard and pound were redefined in terms of the metric system in 1959. You wouldn’t know it from simple observation, although there are bizarre exceptions (e.g. the so-called-free market has somehow blessed two liters as a standard size for beverage packaging). Still, even though the paleo-units are “officially” metric, any sort of design work not intended for just one of the two mensuration provinces requires time-wasting pain in the ass doubling of effort just to kiss the ass of the baqkwards foot-draggers.

How to set things right? The one thing the Q’s aren’t failures at is cheating and tantrum-throwing until they get their way, like the spoiled children of exasperated parents. It’s galling, but the grownups have to decide to spend a much greater amount of their time and effort suppressing and cauterizing Q bullshit. Maybe after a generation or two of enforced maturity, we can lighten up on the medicine.

“Mrs. Dean” affectionately calls me an alien. While I don’t come from another planet, this attribution seems figuratively true. Do I lack some mental organ that others possess, one that supplies certain kinds of feelings? Or do I possess an extra one that suppresses or surpasses these feelings? I go about under the impression that I don’t share with people the same feelings about lots of things. I wonder if they really feel what they seem to, or if they are also alienated but go through the motions to fit in with the groupthink.

Sports. I don’t express opinions about sports, so people often infer that I hate them. Certainly, I hate participating in them, unless drinking beer and throwing darts is a sport. My family didn’t watch or listen to them, so I never bonded with them when young, and I was picked on by the jocks, never befriending anybody to whom sports was important, never learning the rules of the games I endured in PE class. I can’t participate convincingly in sports conversations, and there is little to be gained by relating my a-sportic upbringing. Simply walking away is rude and attracts attenion. A lose-lose-lose situation. One reason I dread human interaction is the probability that said interaction will drift into sports talk and thus unwelcome awkwardness.

Religion. Growing up, my family took their Christianity relatively seriously. I went along and tried to believe and participate honestly. I was confirmed. I enjoyed singing and was in the choir. One of my Seattle aunts was quite religious and I enjoyed going with her to church a couple of times when I visited. But when I was no longer required to attend church weekly, I stopped. Since moving away for college I only go for weddings and funerals, and to defer unpleasant family conversations. I am aware of various atheism related societal trends, but as with other “movements” I’ve become associated with, they seem to attract performative toxicity adherents, and I have enough bullshit to fend off in my other pursuits.

Cars. For safely getting from point A to point B, I approve of cars. I have owned several and been glad of it. However, any major possession is going to be a status symbol whether or not the possessor wants it to be, just because other people see them possessing it, prompting a preening/primping response in many people that sprains my eye-rolling muscles. Beyond keeping it in safe and inoffensive running order, I have no interest in my car’s status symbology. As with sports I cannot discuss cars. I cannot contain my impression of them as a vile public nuisance, again leading to awkwardness and social trepidation.

Books, Movies, Music, TV. I have a rich inner life. I am privileged that my “job” (when I have lately been employed) is essentially what I have chosen as my life’s work, and so need little in the way of “escape”. I grew up on science fiction and fantasy, and still mostly read that. After a desert of appealing works from the late 80’s to the early 00’s, I bathe in an oasis of excellent authors. I rarely enjoy popular entertainments and don’t seek them out, although I usually enjoy Marvel superhero movies (evidently Marvel has figured out how to take nerds like me back in time to (false-memory?) fond youthful memories). There are some TV shows that I enjoy watching with Mrs. Dean, perhaps with some popcorn and a gourmet sarsaparilla, but I rarely seek them out myself. I guess the only time I don’t feel alienated is when I am enjoying times with friends and family, who either share much of my affect or at least embrace it.