politics

My Shadow Ballot 2022

KannikLeave a comment

It’s that time again! Needless to say, this will be a long post… but with the elections coming up (And please do what you can to be able to vote!) it’s well worth it. (And if you’re concerned it makes no difference, please read this post about it.)  With the recent spurious rulings by the SCOTUS and the cruelty by conservative governors/state legislators as well as many corporations, it’s increasingly more apparent that elections do indeed have consequences for us all (and that they’re not all the same).

I’m going to switch it up this time and talk about the California-specific propositions last. Continue reading →

Philosophy Tuesday

KannikLeave a comment

This seems like a very appropriate time to discuss motivated, a priori, and presumptive reasoning.

Because they are the very antithesis of reasoning.  Rather than start at the wide field to narrow to a conclusion, they instead begin with the desired conclusion or outcome already determined and use the illusion and language of reasoning to justify themselves, irrespective of what the complete picture may actually say.

In a way I’ve touched on this before when I noted that we are rationalizing rather than rational creatures.  Motivated reasoning is this writ large:  we start with our “truth” and then rationalize our conclusion.

But it also engages so many other of our biases and foibles.  MR lets us bring out the big guns, like cherry-picking, confirmation bias, or our ultimate weapon, that of simply being dismissive.  We even get to be creative, by making up whole new goals, tests, causes, doctrines, laws, interpretations, “truths”, and more, whatever’s needed to create a pathway from here to that desired outcome.

(And you better believe that these are independent pathways – a rationale pathway to create one desired outcome can be quickly twisted or discarded when creating a different rational pathway when ensuring another desired outcome.)

In the end, that predetermined conclusion is, well, concluded, all while cloaked behind supposedly coherent and good faith deduction.

This, like all our foibles, is quite a universal ability that comes with being human.  And, again like nearly all of our foibles, we are often not even aware of it.**  That is where the practice of being mindful comes in, to recognize and acknowledge our desires and find the balance so that we include them in our deliberations and thus avoid being hijacked by them.

** On the other hand, some are fully aware of their motivated reasoning and just don’t care.  They willingly bear false witness to further their aims, trying to hoodwink everyone into missing their actual intent and harm(s).

#cdnpoli

KannikLeave a comment

Hello my fellow Canadians!  As I contemplate my absentee ballot, I’d like to share my experience as a current expat and provide some perspective about our choice.  Living in the USA for numerous years, I have seen firsthand the results of conservative/republican governments and the policies they champion.  They have not, and do not, create good and desirable outcomes.  They do not create equity, harmony, or prosperity for the country or the majority of its citizens, and are instead heavily titled towards the select few at the expense of the many.  And when it comes to solving the real issues of our time, they’d rather pretend they didn’t exist, blame others, or drum up irrelevant false outrage instead of being courageous and doing the hard work.  There is no leadership.

Therefore, I strongly recommend you not to vote for the Conservative Party of Canada in this upcoming election.  (And please do vote!)

Now, the CPC and its leader especially are trying to paint themselves as a “kindler, more gentle” conservative party.  Except that their policies still crib heavily from the Republican playbook.  One only has to look at how Doug Ford has run things in Ontario to know what’s at the heart of the modern Canadian conservative mindset.  (Even the promise of one dollar beer for everyone was a bogus boondoggle.)  Or how Conservative senator Don Plett stated, out loud, “We can all hope that the right side will win [the US election], and we will all send President Trump our congratulations when they do.”  Or how their environmental plan is to roll back targets, set pricing that will be ineffective, and then to enact a reimbursement scheme that manages to be both a pain to set up, crazily restrictive, and will benefit the wealthiest the most.  Or how its shadow cabinet members voted against banning the practicing of the harmful application of conversion (and I hate using the following word, for it is anything but a therapy) therapy.

And the like.  They try to dress themselves up and couch themselves in accommodating terms, but they are anything but.  They do not have the vision, nor the policies, to grow Canada to what it could be for itself, its people, and the world at large.  I have seen what this mindset and the Republican policies create, and it is not what they claim.  The results are deleterious, compounding even more more so for the future.  (And if you fondly remember the Progressive Conservatives… these are not them.  They have long been pushed out of the party by the Reform/Republican mindset.)

Therefore, again, I strongly recommend that you do indeed vote (voting is important!) and that you do not cast that vote for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Philosophy Tuesday

KannikLeave a comment

It’s rather remarkable how adaptive we (as human beings) are.  I’m not speaking only about our geographic reach, as expansive as that is.  I mean just about anything and everything.  All so quickly, things, situations, systems, dynamics, societies, and etc all begin to feel normal.   And not just normal, but everlasting, intrinsic, and even right.  Like that’s how its supposed to be.  And like how there’s no way it could be any other way.

It’s reality.

Which, of course, is caca.  If there’s one thing for certain, it is that things change.**  We are always, ongoingly, creating ourselves, creating our communities, creating our systems, and creating our culture.  When we get lost in that feel of normalcy, that’s when we can get stuck creating the same thing over and over and over again.  Perhaps inadvertently doing so, but the effect is the same.  Inside the rut, possibility is greatly stifled.

That said, again of course, it’s not bad that we are so adaptive!  It’s great that we don’t smell the sewer after a few minutes.  Or that the lake stops feeling cold after jumping in.  Or that great shifts soon feel much less disruptive.***  But, like just about everything else that comes with being human, there are aspects of it that are empowering, and aspects that are disempowering and even destructive.

By remembering this great capacity of ours we can remain mindful to see where we’re letting something slide.  Where we’re giving things that are harmful, or don’t work work, or aren’t right or just or equitable or verdant, or anything of that sort, giving them the automatic pass and thinking “well, it’s just how it is.”  Or, worse, getting caught up in it all and doubling down on it.

Here’s where we can step out of the adaptiveness ruse.  Nothing is inherent.  Nothing is intractable.  We hold the agency for ourselves and who we are being, for our relationships, and with the communities and societies we ongoingly build.

 

*  From the frigid arctic to the intense deserts, all without the use of what we consider “modern and necessary technology” – which is a whole avenue of exploration in of itself!  But to quip shortly about it here, we have done a lot and even thrived with just our wits and less fragility… AND that’s just it, isn’t it?  It’s the same main thrust of this post:  we’ve become accustomed to and thus adapted to a very narrow temperature range, and anything outside of those bounds feels like death.

** Not always for the ‘better’, which is another reason why this feeling of normalcy can be so deleterious, for it will allow the ‘little’ normals to become ‘big’ normals very quickly, and if those little normals are not great, then the effects and harm also spread and become widespread.

*** To whit was how, in short order, the way of working, remembering my mask, new ways of communicating, and etc all due to the pandemic started to feel most normal.

Philosophy Tuesday

KannikLeave a comment

We need to watch out for, and push back on, and resist, those who perpetrate the “Siblings in the Back Seat” ruse.

You know the schtick:  where one sibling will poke and prod and annoy the other until, understandably, they push back, and then it’s all “MoooOOoOooooOOOOooom, they’re hitting me!”  And thus the instigator turns themselves into the victim, and the actual aggrieved is the one who gets punished.

It’s a depraved and cruel way of behaving, though it is most certainly cunning.*  Cunning enough to become adopted and carried forth through life, where the stakes become much higher than that in the back seat and where the effects are felt not only interpersonally, but through families, communities, companies, and even to the level of countries.  Where the stakes are very high indeed, and where this trickery is used to delegitimize and dehumanize, as a pretext for theft and persecution, to justify highly asymmetric responses, and, in general, to excuse and even try to legitimize all manner of deleterious and harmful behaviour.

But it is possible to see through this deceit.  Once we observe enough back seat shenanigans, we can begin to recognize the pretense.  We can stop falling into the trap. We can call it out, and align ourselves accordingly.**

Even on ruses that have been perpetrated for 73 years.

 

* This is, in many ways, a variant on the DARVO technique.

** We can do this even if, once, we bought into them.  Perhaps even bought into them fully. Unquestioningly.  Gleefully.

*** Said another way is simply this:  We need to be very wary of and verify the stories of enthusiastic aggressors.

Philosophy Tuesday

Kannik1 Comment

When we see someone (including ourselves!) exhibiting hypocrisy, especially that of the jaw-dropping kind, it’s not uncommon to wonder, “Wow.  How can they shift and switch their values and beliefs so drastically?”

But here’s the thing:  they didn’t, and they aren’t.  The truth of it is that they never held that value or belief in the first place.

No matter how much or loudly they professed, no matter how dramatically they thumped on it, no matter how righteous they were about it, no matter how insulted and disgusted they acted, it was all just theatre.  It was all an act, using their words and indignations as weapons all uttered in bad faith as a cover up to their real intent.

There’s an ‘in order to’ happening here, something behind the supposed value or belief that is the actual driving force.  A different value or belief, one that is usually non-virtuous in nature and that does not lead towards possibilities of a just, equitable, and loving world.  Instead it is a value or belief or ‘truth’ that is mired in identity, biases, and in rigidly narrow views about the world and those within it.

And often they themselves may not even be fully aware of it.  Cognitive dissonance, the fact we are rational vs rationalizing creatures, the whole nature of hidden biases (that’s why they’re called hidden, after all), all of these can be in play to keep it obfuscated from everyone involved.*

Of course, some are fully aware of it and just don’t care.  They willingly bear false witness to further their aims, trying to hoodwink everyone into missing their actual intent and harm(s).**

Regardless of its exact flavour, rather than get bogged down in engaging with their current value/belief of convenience we can instead step back and look at what their actions are accomplishing, and through that see what’s really going on.  We can discover what is the actual guiding force.

And then we can engage directly with that.

 

* Which is why it would be so refreshing if they were at least aware and honest about it, especially when it’s trying to justify really shitty behaviour.

** And it might be a combo of being partially aware and partially not – rationalizing it so supremely well for themselves that they feel it right even if they don’t fully realize or fully own what’s actually driving it.  Especially if this clashes with one of their morals that they also wield as a cudgel elsewhere!  Again, it’d be preferable for the pretense to drop and just say what’s actually there and actually going on.

Voices in Unison: “I Don’t Matter” Edition

Kannik3 Comments

All throughout this crazy year, I have been inviting people to vote.  There are stark reminders every day of the difference between bad or absent or incompetent or self-serving “leadership”, and what’s possible under competent leaders.  And so today I’d like to extend a special invitation to those who say “My vote doesn’t matter” with these responses…

My vote doesn’t matter; TLDR version:  In short, this question:  if your vote doesn’t matter, then why are they doing all they can to violate your right to vote, both in ability and in its impact?  Whether it be by closing polling places, or implementing unnecessary and onerous voting ID and registration issues, or making information difficult to discover, or participating in extreme gerrymandering, or linking voting rights to the paying of fines and fees, or attacking mail in voting, or creating a false panic about fraud, or simply to engage in behavior that is designed to put you off voting, there is so a lot being done to decrease voter turnout.  And they cement it in place by fostering that very feeling you have, that feeling that your vote doesn’t matter.  They want you to think it doesn’t matter, that it’s too hard, that you’re better off staying home and just not vote.  Because they know that the less people vote, the easier it is for them to influence the outcome.  The more people they can get to tune out, and the more roadblocks they can throw in the way, the greater the impact of their fervent base upon which they can count on to show up while at the same time making it easy for their base to vote.  Which, in turn, makes it easy to gain the power.  By doing all this they get to break the system and choose their electorate, not, as it should be, the other way around.  To that, I say no.  Please vote. Continue reading →

Philosophy Tuesday

KannikLeave a comment

As I’ve noted here before, there is great clarity that comes from comparing who we proclaim ourselves to be (or to be about), and looking at what our actions, or the results thereof, say about what’s ACTUALLY going on.  And what’s going on right now is really showing us a very stark view of how authorities view and treat people, to the tune of 422+ incidents of overreach, brutality, and aggression* that have hurt, injured, and even killed people they supposedly swore an oath to protect.

And with that comes a hard look at how we let things get to this point.  And what to do about it.  Be ready, for the tactics and fallacies are going to get deployed real fast, in thick clouds (and yes, that imagery is not chosen by accident), trying to excuse these actions.

Especially when it may be coming from within.  So let’s look at one of these fallacies in detail, because by doing so we can both recognize it when being deployed against us, and moreover inoculate ourselves from ourselves, from our own internal monologues that may also attempt to dismiss, or minimize, some of all that is going on.  And it is the No True Scotsman fallacy:

“No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule – “no true Scotsman would do such a thing”; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman] **

This is, of course, nicely related to the “few bad apples” trope that is so readily trotted out.  (which, by the way, notice A) always only seems to get applied to one side of someone’s preferred group, ie, “our side has only a few bad apples, while the other side I am more than willing to tar with a broad brush and apply a single action/trait to degrade a whole group, and B) ignores that the complete saying is “one bad apple spoils the barrel.”)  But my own variant of it comes in this form:

“No climber/paintballer would ever steal my wallet.”

This comes from my days of playing paintball and, later, going to climbing gyms.  There were times where there were no lockers available, or place to stash something, or should I lock my car, or any of those kind of moments… and my mind would head straight into that fallacy:  “Well, I’m a good person, and I am a paintballer, so therefore paintballers are good, and besides, I’ve met a bunch of them, and they seem all like fun friendly people, so clearly I’ve got nothing to worry about…”  The same went for climbers.  “We’re all cool dudes and dudettes, all is safe.”

Fortunately for me, my wallet, or anything else, was never stolen.  But I’ve known others who have had things “walk away” in those kinds of situations, and I’ve been overcharged or otherwise tricked by paintballers and climbers alike.

This is a great example of what’s known as “positive bias” – instances of our hidden prejudices that favour those we have an affinity for, or an identity towards.  This quick piece on NPR is a great primer.

With these biases we can so easily deceive ourselves.  Especially as often we will do anything to avoid something uncomfortable.  Or to avoid a new truth that challenges us and our reality and our identities.  And this fallacy is an easy one to reach for.

But eating bitter is where true growth can happen.

 

* Keep scrolling in that thread — it’s a long list to get to 422+.  There’s also a spreadsheet here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YmZeSxpz52qT-10tkCjWOwOGkQqle7Wd1P7ZM1wMW0E/edit#gid=0  All noted and saved for posterity, so that it cannot be forgotten or denied.

** Also, if you aren’t familiar with all of the logical fallacies, they are mightily powerful to learn about.  Here’s one site that does it in a lighthearted fashion:  https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/  and the more extensive wiki article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies