In Defence of Disney (only one year too late!)

Who is that girl I see, staring straight back at me?

I was procrastinating on Facebook not very long ago when a friend linked me to an article which exposed Disney to be a bay of sexist pigs. It essentially pointed out that all their “Princesses” from Snow White to Belle empty-headed beauties with nothing to offer men except their sexuality.

They even attacked Enchanted, one of my latest obsessions (and I assure you, not solely because of Patrick Dempsey. I don’t even watch Grey’s Anatomy, for the record.)

OUCH OUCH OUCH.

That was me taking a couple of shots for Disney. Like JKR, I will “defend the value of bedtime stories to my last breath” (CHECK QUOTE). Sure, fairytales may not suit every little girl, just as the colour pink, high heels and long hair do not suit every single grown woman. But what harm can they do?

There would have been a time when I was about, say, sixteen, when I was hell-bent on purging the patriarchy from my life. But five years have really made a difference to the way I see housewives and Disney princesses. Women ought to have a choice. Who are you to say that the life of a stay-at-home mum is any less fulfilling for any particular individual? If she’s forced into it, you’d have a good case. But just because a woman says, “I’m happiest when I’m at home with my children,” is that a sign she’s been brainwashed?

Don’t get me wrong – I nearly cried when my flatmate, who’s also in medical school, told me her aim in life was to be a housewife and that the med degree was her “backup plan” – because it seemed like a waste of the health system/university’s resources.

How does Enchanted come into this? Well for starters, everyone’s bitching about “the princess”, or Amy Adams’ character. But I’m upset that they’re completely ignoring Idina Menzel (particularly because since Rent and Wicked I’ve had a bit of a crush on her) because to me, the dichotomy between these two definitely drew me in (that, and James Marsden).

Amy Adams plays Giselle, a princess who learns to stand on her own two feet, while Nancy, a feminist’s triumph (runs her own business, et cetera) learns that there’s nothing wrong with giving into impulsivity once and awhile. One of my favourite bits of the movie was where Nancy, having just arrived in Andalasia and deciding to marry Prince Edward, threw out her Blackberry. The overarching lesson there is that the key to happiness is the middle path. As Giselle teaches Robert that it’s okay to be imaginative and whimsical sometimes, Edward teaches Nancy what happens when you’re all work and no play. I would’ve liked to see Nancy teach Edward a few things about reality, the way Robert helps Giselle grow up and fit into the Real World, but I suppose there just wasn’t enough movie time.

The only Disney princesses I dislike on the grounds of feminism to are Aurora and Ariel (nothing to do with a vendetta against the letter “A”, mind you). Aurora doesn’t really do anything except run through the forest and sing, while Ariel sorely lacks commonsense (who in their right mind would give up their means of communication?). My dislike of The Little Mermaid is intensified by the original version of the tale, which ends with the mermaid ending up in a state between life and death, a spirit “of the air” who must wait out a thousand year or something. It’s the saddest story ever (as the Pottercast team will agree) – even worse than the Cinderella version where the stepsisters chop off their feet when their mother tells them to. My friend did a 5000-word essay on how Sleeping Beauty was a symbolic warning for girls to keep their chastity, which I don’t think is entirely unlikely. But just as there are stories about rape and murder and necrophilia and alcoholism and incest and so on, these stories have a place in the very wide but not-so-wonderful world of literature.

And it’s not as if Disney is exclusively producing the most anti-feminist stories of the lot. I personally think Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame has lot to answer for too. Now I’m going to pick out my favourites, the “princesses of the 90’s” (excluding Ariel) which I grew up with, and describe them in more detail.

Belle

• Hardcore feminists say: Persists with an abusive relationship, also something of a Mary-Sue because she is not only the smartest girl in town, she’s “the most beautiful girl in town” as well as having the ability to speak to horses (Philippe! Philippe!) and being able to sing/dance.

I love Belle because it is made clear that her greatest loves are books, family and adventure.
However, as the girl points out to everyone at the end, the Beast is no more monstrous than a man like Gaston. All the >30yr men in the movie are arrogant bastards with no clue about women.

Jasmine

• Hardcore feminists say: Needs to be married before her birthday at the start. Needs to be saved by a man at the end.

Come on, Jasmine is assertive enough to run away from her own family! She’s smart enough to manipulate Aladdin and to change tradition at the end. And may I add, she really does play a part in her own rescue (even if she has to get disgustingly close to Jafar…)

Pocahontas

• Hardcore feminists say: Very little. I think it’s very hard to criticize Pocahontas because all the men (the Chief, Ratcliffe, John Smith et al) are portrayed as idiots compared to the women (Grandmother Willow and the girl herself). Maybe the scene when John Smith sees her coming through the waterfall might be something to whine about, because the only reason he’s interested in chasing after her is because she has a magnificent figure, and her hair/body/etc are just completely unrealistic.

I don’t mind Pocahontas one bit. I mean, she shows more wisdom than all the men of her tribe put together and all the bloody Brits, she stands apart from her family, she doesn’t feel the need to follow John Smith back to the New World (until the sequel, whose existence I refuse to acknowledge), she’s headstrong, independent…what’s there not to love? Also, what is wrong with love/lust/attraction at first sight? It's not like it doesn't exist, or that it's an entirely bad thing. But there's a rant for another day.

Mulan

• Hardcore feminists say: Great start with the emphasis on brains and the jokes about stupid men, but how come the only time she has any influence is when she’s dressed up as a man?

Mulan, I think, mocks both men and women for their particular (though stereotypical) follies. We’re all superficial in one sense or another (the women are vain and short-sighted, the men are…also vain and short-sighted!) I also don’t think Mulan is designed to be the most beautiful girl on the block, like some of the older Disney princesses. And Mulan’s not even a princess, so I personally don’t quite get why people want to stick her in the “eight princesses” group. No, I think any feminist who says she can't stand Mulan probably should go watch the movie again.

So there you go. There are my thoughts on Disney girls. Feel free to disagree or agree.

choose your poison

Most of us are born with a body that's beautiful in its wholeness...so why do we do everything in our power to change this when we grow up?

Don't get me wrong, I definitely have something of the party animal streak within me. But what can really ruin a house party for me is when I see a drunk person throwing up into a bin somewhere.

This might sound slightly odd coming from someone who's worked in aged care, has had baby cousins, studies medicine and comes from a medical family (i.e. I'm okay with fecal incontinence being discussed over lunch, I've mopped up my fair share of toddler vomit, I handle dead body parts, I've stuck my {gloved} hand into a bucket of compost...), but I think I may have some idea why this is the case. Why I rushed to console my feverish cousin who threw up his apple juice all over my floor, but ran away from that college student who started stumbling towards me looking green: I don't really understand why someone who's fortunate enough to have a healthy body would go and deliberately poison it.

Someone who's vomiting because they've contracted a stomach bug is clearly not in control of themselves and therefore is to be pitied. But surely someone who's had 10 standard drinks could have controlled themselves long before they started heaving over the bin/toilet/sink, long before they started wasting medical resources that could be used to help someone who's in dire straits through no fault of their own.

However, those of you who know me will probably yell at me and say that it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, because I have definitely engaged in my share of self-harm. Yes, I was a "cutter" in my teens, long before the word "emo" came into common use. I got out my blades whenever I needed to punish myself, whenever I felt confused, whenever I was frustrated...okay maybe not whenever, since it wasn't happening on a daily basis, but...

It's a part of myself that I really loathe, because I can't believe I was so short-sighted that I thought I'd never wear a swimsuit in public (most of the scars are on my upper thigh) or that I deliberately interfered with my body's normality. I hate my thunder thighs, but what I hate even more is that they've got these angry pale lines where I slashed away my bad feelings several years ago.

And this self-loathing I suppose is a factor in my dislike of people who decide to get completely off their face on their drug of choice. I fear it's similar to what some people say about homophobes - that the people who are most against homosexuality are those who see such tendencies within themselves and are uncomfortable about it. So feel free to laugh at me, or say that I'm twice as screwed up as you. Who knows, I probably am.

But maybe next time you're at a party, spare a thought for your liver? And the rest of your beautiful body that Nature blessed you with?

don't sue mary-sue

Begun November 2007 when procrastinating for NaNo, fleshed out July 2008
Yes, I am over eighteen and I fanfic (read/occasionally write). Don’t sue me.

I also think you shouldn’t sue the Mary-Sue writers either.

Firstly, in their defence, a lot of them haven’t reached their teens, and most are probably innocent children living out their harmless fantasies. What little girl didn’t dream she was a princess, a popstar, a mermaid, a model or all four? I suppose in the past decade, the fashions have changed – it’s trendy to be a vampire, black hair is more beautiful than blonde hair, Draco Malfoy is the new Prince Charming…they’re not trying to write Pulitzer-material, they’re just experimenting. And I would rather have my kids experimenting with words than intravenous drugs. No matter how rubbishy their writing is, it’s not likely to hurt them when they revisit it several years later and realise how awful it was (on the contrary, they’re likely to laugh, if they have any kind of maturity.)

My second point, I feel, is far more pressing.

Why are we so quick to look at a character and scream, “PERFECT HAIR! MARY-SUE!” when we will happily swoon over bronze-haired, pale-skinned Adonises like Edward Cullen? Or if he’s not your taste, Gellert Grindelwald, with his golden hair and “merry” face (a la Dorian Grey, methinks). Or, if the psychopathic boys don’t tickle your fancy (and because good things come in threes), just watch any movie featuring Hugh Grant and you’ll eventually find a male Mary-Sue equivalent.

I know there is a term for male Mary-Sues. The “Gary-Stu”. But how often do we use this? In the Harry Potter fandom, for example (which I mostly inhabit), every female canon character, from Ginny Weasley to Cho Chang to Fleur Delacour, has been dubbed a Sue at one point. The evidence people use – Ginny gets all the boys, Cho wallows in angst (“wangts”), Fleur is pretty – can best be described as dodgy. But in all my years of fandom, I have never heard someone cry “Gary-Stu” at any male canon character. Why?

I think it’s a reflection on who reads and comments and forms opinions on fanfiction. It’s the girls. The girls who have grown to love the male canon characters and would lay down their lives for them, or alternatively, who would sink their nails into the hearts of any romantic competition. I did this once – I fancied myself Cho’s Chang younger sister, so that when Cho and Harry went out and inevitably broke up, I would snatch him for my own evil designs. Many girls are going to hate poor Ginny’s guts simply because she married the man in the end. I have heard tirades about Astoria Greengrass, who never even appears in the books – “Waaah! Stupid JKR just pulled a name out of thin air!” Well – sorry to bust your self-righteous bubbles, but I suspect you’re just mad that JKR didn’t pull your name out of thin air.

Moreover, it’s a fact of life that girls are going to be slightly more critical of their own kind than of another species. Particularly at a time when boyfriends are the latest must-have status items. (I’m allowed to say this – sadly, I’ve been there, and done that.)

It’s an animal instinct, jealousy.

The main difference I discovered between boys and girls in high school was that the girls could get jealous, competitive and just plain bitchy. Boys seem to have shorter, less malicious, fuses, which has always made them incredibly endearing creatures to me (and still does, even if I identify as queer these days). Tall Poppy Syndrome is more rampant among girls, most of whom are trying desperately to fit in with some crowd or another (Posh Tottys, Chavs, Emos, Geeks, you name it, yes I have seen St Trinian’s…)

Being the medical student I am, I managed to boil it down to biological terms.

Once upon a time, in the animal kingdom, women realised that if they got pregnant, their life would be put on hold for several months. They could only bear one offspring at a time, whereas men could father several at once. In Darwinian terms, “survival of the fittest” means that both men and women are trying to mate and produce the best genetic outcome possible by combining with a favourable partner. Now men can just go around, depositing their germ cells in several women, and hope that at least one of them will provide a good genetic “other half”. But women get only one chance, which makes them bitchy and competitive and willing to fight other girls for the chance to exchange genetic material with a top-quality man.

Well, in my hypothetical-primordial brain it makes sense.

Now, where were we? Mary-Sues? Well now that I have proved that it’s just animal instinct that makes us attack these female original characters, you now have 2 options. Firstly, we can be mature, overcome our animal instincts (because we’re humans, after all, and we have the capacity to), and refrain from abusing young, female creators of self-inserts. Secondly, we can go for consistency, and extend our web of hatred to include beautified Draco Malfoys, impossible male OCs (especially those in slash fics) and EDWARD CULLEN.

Anti-Twillight rant coming soon.

single and fabulous

Should the magazine cover read "Single and Fabulous?", or "Single and FABULOUS!"?

(If you get the Sex and the City reference, you rule.)
God, I want to go to NYC one day...

Anyway, this topic recently came to my attention because over the past few weeks, I have been surrounded by people having relationship problems. Half a dozen of my good friends have broken up with their significant others, and if I have to listen to another single person whinge about how they are sick of singledom, I will throw my double-pointed knitting needles at them. And so when someone bemoaned the fact they had "never been kissed" on a forum which I occasionally visit (occasionally because most of the denziens are younger than me) I felt compelled to answer thus:

"Excuse me, but I'd like to add my two cents, since I'm nineteen and a half, and I have never been kissed. Although there are moments where curiosity gets the better of me, most of the time I'm reasonably comfortable with my status.

Kissing doesn't mean ANYTHING unless it's in context. If you're not sharing a kiss with someone you have feelings for, it's no more meaningful than snogging a pillow.

I had a brief encounter with a guy in high school (he asked me to his prom) but there was absolutely no chemistry between us, and I'm extremely relieved that we never kissed. It would have spoilt a lot for us both.

In short: there is NOTHING wrong with you. You just haven't met the right person yet - and only time can "fix" that.

And if it helps, I've been told by a lot of my friends who are in relationships that kissing is extremely overrated. People don't see stars, time doesn't stop, and you can get EBV.*"

*EBV = Epstein-Barr Virus, otherwise known as Glandular Fever or Infectious Mononucleosis or just "Mono" or "The Kissing Disease". It's nasty.

Shortly after, on another set of forums, the same ridiculous topic came to my attention. And guess what I said to this girl? I was slightly more eloquent because I planned what I was going to say this time.

"At the end of this year, I will be 20. I have never had a steady significant other, unless you count the boy who asked me to his prom as a "boyfriend". I certainly don't - going to his prom was a mistake because there was no chemistry whatsoever between us. I would be lying if I said my singledom doesn't bother me sometimes (usually it's in conjunction with my parents being snotty and not allowing me to go out at night without a male chaperone, or with my girl mates celebrating their anniversaries) but on the whole I'm quite happy with it.

To put it simply - single people have problems, but "taken" people have problems too - simply having a partner will not make your life perfect.

Whether your life will benefit from a relationship or not completely depends on an individual's circumstances. For example, I'm probably better off alone at the moment because I value my freedom very highly, I have a ridiculously busy life and barely enough time for my friends as it is, AND I have no idea what I want in a prospective partner (especially when it comes to sex).

But I also recognise that my life is always changing, and one day, the pros will outweigh the cons, and I'll be ready. Perhaps this day will come in a week, perhaps it'll be in a month, perhaps it'll be in a year, perhaps it'll take a decade, or perhaps it'll never come at all because I'll be so satisfied with my life that I won't need that type of connection with someone (priests, nuns and monks live like this, and many of them are very happy people). I'm not going to waste time on stressing about when it'll happen."

Since I really like the number three, here's a conversation between my mother and me for completeness. And because it made me laugh.

Mum: Can you just learn to be more ladylike for once? I don't know if it's because of excitability or hearing loss that you're always so loud, but you're putting the boys off!
Me: Really, now?!! (right now I'm thinking - it's not my addictions, my gullibility, my immaturity, my frigidity, my flat-chestedness, my feminist beliefs, IT'S MY VOLUME. GREAT.)
Mum: Yes! You need to tone down a bit - to stop being - to put it bluntly - a LESBIAN MAGNET!

Er, mum...? What's so wrong with being a lesbian magnet? Especially if you're the type who would very possibly not mind dating a lesbian? And anyway, mum, you sound like a broken record.

Well...here I was, labouring under the illusion that you shouldn't go chasing people, boys or girls, that you ought to wait for the right person to come along, who'll not only tolerate your flaws but love you all the more for them...

Perhaps I'm too idealistic, but this is why I don't buy into the teenage dating game anymore. It is a game. You need strategy, luck and to abide by the rules (it also helps if you're attractive enough to distract your opponent). It's emotionally exhausting. Physically too, if you're unfortunate enough - like one of my male friends who was keen on a girl, and asked her out. The subsequent rejection caused his systolic blood pressure to skyrocket to 160 (normal is 120) and his resting heart rate to shoot up to 105bpm (normal is 70bpm). To add insult to this injury, he now only gets 2-3 hours of sleep a night because he's feeling "utterly ripped up inside".

Ouch.

All because it's a huge blow to your self-esteem.

That's gotta hurt.

I'm not entirely sure what love is, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't come remotely close. I'm sorry, but to me, true love, romantic or platonic, will always have the "unconditional" quality to it. I may only be nineteen, but one of the first lessons I learnt as an adult was that if you truly care for someone and their happiness, you'll let them go.

That, and to me, what separates "love" from "infatuation" is that when you're crushing after someone, you're obsessing over their virtues, their talents, all the GOOD things about them. When you love someone, you look at all their imperfections and you adore that they're kind of scrawny, that their hair is all bushy, that they fall asleep on your shoulder and drool all over your sleeve...

Heck, it doesn't even have to be love for a girl/boyfriend. It's like with knitting. I love the scarf I knitted in ninth grade, in spite of the inconsistent tension, the miscounted stitches, the horrible garter stitch...I love it BECAUSE it's so misshapen and nobody else will wear it but me. (What can I say, we were made for each other. Sorry about the knitting analogies - but it is winter in my part of the world.)

Remember: somewhere, there is someone out there who will fit your jagged edges like a matching piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

By all means, if you want to change something about yourself, go ahead. But it should be you who wants the change, not some good-for-nothing dick who wants a trophy wife.

Being single is not an indication that something is wrong with you, be it your chewed-up nails or your too-high standards. I have said this before in this rant. It's JUST THE TIMING that's wrong. Do I make myself clear?

Maybe you'll tell me I'm being bitter because I'm old, single and ugly and trying to convince myself that my life is worth something. Maybe you'll tell me I'm not qualified to comment on relationship topics. But maybe, just maybe, my little incoherent rant will make you see that "fabulously single" is not an oxymoron. I really hope you do, especially if you're one of my friends, because it'll save me from sitting up until 1am cuddling you, feeding you tissues and saying exactly the same thing - that you are fabulous, just the way you are.

P.S. I can't believe I've had this website for years and haven't written something like this yet, given that I watch Sex and the City not to perve on the men, not to swoon over the fashion, but to listen to an awesome journalist give her candid take on life.

Gender and the Self

I've been meaning to upload this for ages. This essay, which I wrote about two years ago, is what totally changed my view on the world with regard to gender and sexuality. Unfortunately I can't find the version which has my in-text references in, so bear with me, please!

So...what is gender?

Historically, humans have categorised themselves by assigning “gender”, defined as a social construction, to bodies “sexed” by biology. I believe that the self is not only a fragile entity, but a constantly changing one – a “fluctuating identity” – and sex and gender function like any other variable in the way they affect us. We are aware of the physiological differences between men and women, just as we are aware of the physiological differences between people of African or Asian race, and so I think that assigning gender to selves is similar to assigning race. Both have foundations in nature, then are built up by society. Gender strengthens selves, firstly by allowing them to exist under the guise of permanence, secondly by creating the sense of community. Paradoxically nevertheless, it can potentially take power from selves, since “community” implies superior status for those within it, and inferior status for those excluded. Any category creates restrictions upon the self, limiting the ways we can move about within it, and thus we are at risk of becoming trapped by unjust assumptions generated by the gender stereotype. Although to say that gender is an inherent property of the self is to discount our transience and individuality, to say that gender does not affect the self at all is to suggest that the self is disconnected from the body altogether.

Our body is “the locus of a disassociated self” which has merely “the illusion of a substantial unity”. For this reason, separating human beings based on the sex of their bodies is nothing more than an attempt to make the self appear coherent and enduring. Most people remain either male or female throughout their whole lives, which allows them to find constancy in their self-concept by clinging to a gender definition. April Ashley was distraught because he felt that his self was fragmented, a female mind in a male body. When he was able to reconcile gender and sex, he was content, because he had found the semblance of stability. It is not until puberty that male and female bodies begin to change to become sharply distinct; we become aware of our gender, identifying ourselves as men and women, labels which seem more permanent, in response to those changes. This is why Greer’s “stereotype” has lasted; it is proven through the continuing success of Mills and Boon novels. Embracing the generic stereotype of the romantic heroine can help women come to terms with the disharmony and discord in their lives and selves. Moreover, Oakley in Sex, Gender and Society describes how our feeling of security as adults, indeed, our “mental health” can only be preserved by “staying within the boundaries” of gender, which proves that gender is similar to ethnicity, which is also based on genetic variation. In Looking for Alibrandi, a popular modern novel, Josie’s Italian heritage becomes a rock for her to hang onto during her tumultuous adolescence, because it has been “nailed” into her. Therefore, our selves may find permanence, forgetting the temporality and malleability of our existence, in linking physical appearance and gender, just as they do by linking it with ethnicity.

Gender is part of the matrix of beliefs within which we construct our selves. We exist in “a field of overlapping social and cultural identities”, one of which is whether we are male or female, and through “intersubjective recognition” we make our selves whole. Identification with others was the reason why April Ashley “longed to be a woman”. He shared the trappings of gender – “jewels, fur, make-up” – with the group sectioned off by society as “women”. Once he could belong, he felt “resplendent” from the sense of fellowship and completeness of self. Men are renowned for their “old boys’ clubs”, while women in mainstream media such as Sex and the City also form cliques, finding safety in numbers. Although concepts such as the “Byronic Hero” seem to undermine this, as women find security in a domineering male figure, I believe this is dependence, rather than companionship. We can see that gender behaves like race, another social construction based on biology, as people who share a similar racial background tend to gravitate towards each other, forming mini-communities within a large one. Even in multicultural Sydney, areas such as Leichhardt and Cabramatta are famous for a particular culture. We also observe Josie finding fellowship “with other confused beings” as an Italian. Greer claims that this movement towards others of our own kind is based on “narcissism”, and works to bolster our self-esteem. We can make our selves feel strong and stable by linking them with others, through common threads such as gender.

However, the sense of community also paradoxically implies exclusion, because a community is not only defined by who is in it, but who is not in it. In this way, gender can empower or disempower individual selves. The feminism movement emerged because of indignation at the separation and oppression of the female sex and accused the patriarchy of attempting to use gender as a tool to turn women into inferior selves. The self-images of men had been reinforced, while the self-esteems of women were fairly dismal, as shown by de Beauvoir’s sad reflection on the subjugation of women. Even an ordinary man “behaves at home like a minor god”, empowered by the gender rift. Greer goes even further, to suggest that women have been “castrated”, turned into “eunuchs”, the mere property of men, by the social expectations placed up on them by the gender stereotype. However, I think that men are as victimised by gender as much as women are; they are forced to conform to their own stereotype of the “castrator”. Part of gender’s darker side is that it brings into existence a universal battle, because dichotomy creates a “power struggle” between the two sides. This is just like when we separate humans from the rest of nature, such as through the notion of “stewardship”, and “domination and destruction” of nature then occurs. Gender therefore delegates different powers to selves – de Beauvoir names them “masculine logic” and feminine “magic”, as any form of separation creates conflict between different sides.

These expectations compel both men and women to conform to stereotypes and maintain social order. Gender therefore defines what selves can and cannot do – whatever is deemed detrimental to the peace of the community can be restrained. Whenever men or women rebel against the roles set out for them, there is a disturbance in the community. For example, in Elizabethan England, when Queen Elizabeth rebelled against the gender paradigm by refusing to marry and bear children, this forced people to think that their contemporary view of women could be wrong. Pamphlets with oxymoronic names such as “Haec Vir” (the Womanish-Man) infiltrated the community, and assisted the emergence of a society in which “no rigid pre-existing doctrines dictated what the roles of the sexes should be”. The physical constrictions which gender has a reputation for enforcing reflect the ones placed on the psychological self; women wore corsets in Victorian society and Bantu women elongate their necks with brass rings, while Women’s Lib in the sixties often told their contemporaries to “burn their bras”. Elizabeth Gross was concerned about the “phallocentrism” which, through the “regimes of knowledge”, submerged women. Nationalism has in the past been used to “justify aggression”, being the catalyst and fuel for wars. By re-creating their own history through burying fake artefacts and uncovering them, claiming they were the remnants of an advanced Aryan race, the Nazis succeeded in not only supporting German struggles but moulding the German people to fit their specific regime. People believed their country had laid out a grand part for them to play, and in turn laid down their own lives fighting to maintain their country’s greatness. Gender, like nationality, is indeed a “conservative ideological force” because encourages the “retention” of the original mores by conditioning us.

The essentialists believe that what biology has bestowed upon us, sex, and the psychological paradigm, gender, are equivalent and superior to mundane variables such as hair or eye colour. Someone who is of the female sex will automatically be of the feminine gender, and a self will be created in the image of masculinity or femininity, because of the dichotomy of nature. But these people are neglecting to recognise that the categories based on chromosomes, XY and XX, cannot encompass all human beings, for there are people who possess the genetic codes XXY, XYY or XO. Although every society uses sex to ascribe gender, the composition of gender differs between communities. For example, William Davenport noted that in a certain Southwest Pacific society, “only men wear flowers in their hair”, and familiar gender roles were reversed. Furthermore, these definitions are not even stable themselves within one society; throughout the ages, “woman” has fluctuated. Today, April Ashley, despite being born possessing the genetic makeup of a man, is considered female, as “our sister” by Greer, who also notices that there is no “single face of the year”. Gender clearly cannot form the entire basis for the foundation of the self, since it is inadequate in describing all people. Moreover, we cannot forget that all men and women themselves are unique individuals in unique situations – “no originary, neutral and inert ‘woman’ lies there like a base”.

Those who hold the radical view that “woman is fictional” are those who hope for a postgendered world, because the intrinsic “self” behind a human being exists independently of gender or ethnic identities. They would classify “female” or “male” as socially constructed adjectives, like “left-handed” or “right-handed” (hand preference in particular, since most of the population only shows preference for one hand, yet the small ambidextrous percentage is largely ignored). But the whole reason the men differed from the women in the case of the Pacific society way was caused by a genetic difference which the community discovered and enhanced. The combination of biological variables, such as eye colour, hand preference or sex, is what, according to materialist philosophy, constitutes the whole self and gives us our unique identity. Even in dualistic terms, we cannot deny that our physical selves in some ways constitute who we are. For example, Locke proposed the self being a “single seat of consciousness”, but we now know that conscious thoughts are generated by chemical reactions in the brain, and may be manipulated physically. Evidently it is not possible to have a self which is totally unaffected by sex and gender. As Greer concludes her first chapter, “whatever else we are or may pretend to be, we are certainly our bodies”.

The biological differences between the sexes are “no more significant than those between individuals” – belonging to the male or female sex is merely another variation in the human genetic code. This is because our gender is no different to socially constructed divisions such as ethnicity, in that it assists the self to gain stability and fellowship, empowers it and at the same time, disempowers and restricts it. To say that gender is something more than ethnicity, which is also rooted in anatomy, is to overlook gender’s connectedness to history and subjective experience. But neither can we take the opposite stance to this, deconstructing the self, since it fails to notice that every “self” is different because of its uniqueness, which begins with our DNA and is polished off by our social networking. Like Josie Alibrandi who initially ran away from her culture, we cannot escape our gender. But, through introspection with an open mind, we can understand how they make us the people we are.

Bibliography

Board of Studies (1993) Philosophy: Self, Humanity and the World, Armidale: Teaching and Learning Centre, University of New England.

Greer, G (1971) The Female Eunuch, MacGibbon & Kee, London

Marchetta, M (2000) Looking for Alibrandi, Penguin Books, Australia

Oakley, A (1972) Sex, Gender and Society, Sun Books, Australia

Poole, M (1986) Idols-Ideals-Identities – Women in Society, AE Press, Melbourne

Smith, J (1998) Different for Girls, Vintage, UK

see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

Does the internet need further censorship?

Smut?
No offence to anyone, but most smut in fanfics has never bothered me. I'm not talking about paedophilia, or S&M, or bestiality, or incest, I'm talking about two mature people making a decision to sleep together. And as for things like rape...I guess it is touchy, since it's a matter of how well the author handles it. But ANYWAY I think that if you don't like it, nobody's stopping you from moving to another page.

I mean, if you walk into a bookstore, and pick up a novel, it doesn't come with a "sex scenes here!" warning on it. If you walk into a library, and read a blurb, and you think it interests you, only to find out there's rape in it (eg: Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Mariller, which I read in year 7/8), and you don't like reading it, you just return the book unfinished, or you skim over those parts and enjoy the rest of the novel.

No-one told me, when I was 13, that while Daphne du Maurier's classic Rebecca, although it has a very twisted plot (and some very twisted characters, hello Mrs Danvers!), is rather discreet and subtle (as most 1930s novels would be)...that the sequel by Sally Beauman, Rebecca's Tale, is NOT. And when I picked The Blind Assassin off the "gold star recommendations" shelf in a library, no librarian stopped me from borrowing it, even though it's scandal galore.

No-one told me, when I was 14, that Ian McEwan's Atonement would contain a graphic sex scene, the coarsest swear word in the English language, and a rapist. I also grew up in an all-girls school, so I had no inklings that a boy, only a few years older than me, would have...inklings...of the sort that turned up in Catcher in the Rye. But hey, what do you do when it's on a list of "Classics"?

No-one told me, when I was 15, that Snow Falling on Cedars would not only be a mad murder story, but a really steamy romance. Actually, multiple steamy romances, if I remember correctly, including a shower scene. And no one told me that just because Pharaoah had a historical fiction label, didn't mean the characters couldn't have sex every fifteen pages or so. I had a friend who was the same age, and her favourite book at the time was Lolita, which also shocked me when I got round to reading it.

Perhaps I'm only speaking for a niche crowd who wouldn't be mentally scarred by smut in their early teens, or perhaps you'd argue that I myself have been scarred, and shouldn't be allowed to comment on such matters. I can tell you that my parents were quite strict - they liked to censor things - I wasn't allowed to read Wild Swans when I was eight, even though my grandmother gave it to me. But once I got through Jane Eyre, in about year five or something, I was mostly allowed to read whatever I wanted. Movies were a different matter. You see my mum was under the impression that I wouldn't "get" what was going on if two characters started having sex in a book anyway, whereas when sex and violence in moving pictures is just in-your-face, there's no way of getting around that. And to a great extent I agree with this thinking.

So if a piece of writing on the internet is given an "M" label or an "NC-17", that's better than you'd get in most libraries or bookstores. (Moreover, FFNet have fixed it so that any "M-rated" fics don't appear by default on the front page!)

You usually get "picture books", "junior fiction", "young adult fiction" and "fiction". Once you're past young-adult (and if you've read some John Marsden, you'll realise that teen fiction isn't squeaky-clean), you're into the wilderness. And let me quote Oscar Wilde on this:

"There is the same world for all of us, and good and evil, sin and innocence, go through it hand in hand. To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice."

So you know, Kayla, I wholly support you if you want to read and write M-rated stuff, because if you're old enough to cope with the original fiction, you're old enough to cope with the fanfiction.

I'm probably sounding horribly postmodern now, but fanfic is art, and art deserves freedom of expression.

I know people say, "but kindergartners could be browsing the site!" But honestly, I'm not too sure if kids under the age of 10 should be given free range over the internet (although my family didn't install the internet until I actually was 10, so maybe I should keep my mouth shut...) I think there's a lot worse things they could come across if they weren't being supervised than a simple fanfic that they probably won't comprehend the meaning of. To me, there's a difference between an explicit piece of writing and an explicit piece of film. In Roald Dahl's Matilda, where a 5-year old girl is reading Dickens and Hemingway and so on...

If I could only remember the exact quote, I would put it here, but essentially it's something like:
Matilda: Mr Hemingway writes about a lot of things I don't understand...especially about men and women...
Librarian: Don't worry. Just enjoy the story, just let the words wash around you, like music...

Essentially, I don't think that if a 5-year-old accidentally stumbles across a piece of adult fiction, that they're going to fully understand what it's about. Most children at the age of five haven't been reading for terribly long - their reading skills would not be strong enough to comprehend a lot of the material on a site like FFNet (I doubt they'd find the M-rated stuff, for starters), and they would get bored and move to a site like Disney.com.

And as I said before, would you let your 5-year-old cross a busy street, let alone roam through "a land of pit and precipice" on her own?

I didn't think so.

In the fourth or fifth grade, my friends and I were all into Tamora Pierce, particularly the Song of the Lioness Quartet, and the later books had mild smut (which I shamelessly plagiarised in one of my "novels" in year seven). We also read David Eddings' stuff, which makes references to whores and things that go bump in the night. And when I look at John Marsden's books, which plenty of people read in primary school (I didn't though) I start to wonder why some people get so hung-up over a few swear words in a K+ fic.

Swearing?
In kindergarten, we had kids dropping words like "crap", "damn" and "shit" in the playground. And don't get me started on John Marsden and ANDY GRIFFITHS. I just remembered Griffiths - look at this sample from his works:

• The Day My Bum Went Psycho (2001)
• Zombie Bums from Uranus (2003)
• Butt Wars (2004)
• Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict (2005)

And he had a poem in one where a boy was jumping on a bed and swearing at his mum entitled something like "Learning to Read, the Andy Way".

I mean if you use "the other c-word" which was what Atonement centred around, then you need to slap an M-rating on that, because it is one really filthy word with awful connotations. Just as if you want to have as much blood as Sweeney Todd, you should put an M-rating on it. Sure, an M-rating might make some 12-year-olds go hunting for forbidden fruit, but if they're looking for it, as I've said, they probably have some idea of what is out there already, AND FURTHERMORE they should accept the consequences of their strayings.

Savagery?

In the film "Our America", two ten-year-olds dangle a five-year-old out of a 9-storey building window to scare him. The five-year-old falls out of their grasp and dies. Their defence is that they didn't mean to kill him. The law does not accept it, because at ten, you are old enough to know that you are taking a risk by dangling someone out of a window.

Similarly, at ten, you are old enough to know that the internet contains material that may be disturbing. It is up to you to respect the locks on the windows to danger. If you don't, no one is going to save you.

And I still firmly maintain my stance that children under ten should only be surfing the net with the guidance of an adult. I'll start with the banner ads of bikini-clad women saying, "HOT BABES OVER HERE" and move onto the "3NLARG3 UR P3N1$" spam mails. Surely a piece of spam advertising such cosmetic surgery with pictures is more traumatic for a kid than someone describing a sex scene which they're unlikely to "get" anyway.

See, I remember when I was seven, I said to mum, "You've Got Mail is a film about two people making love over the internet". I meant "making love" in the sense that they're "falling in love". And in the novel "The Chrysalids" they use "making love" to mean exactly the same thing. A child will read "and then they made love" as two people expressing their affections for each other, nothing else.

Summary?

It's ridiculous how many double-standards there are in the media...jeez, look at advertisements and music video clips these days, some of them are borderline pornographic.

But no, no, no, when it comes to the internet, we have to shield our pre-teens' eyes from everything under the sun!

And here I'm going to address the drug issue. Over half the population of 14-year-olds in Australia consume alcohol at least weekly. More than one in ten Australian teenagers binge drinks every week. Our kids grow up fast, but the internet has turned into our scapegoat in so many ways.

There are seven- and eight-year olds out there who watch hip-hop videos where the female dancers and lyrics leave nearly nothing to the imagination.

But no, we must protect our seven- and eight-year olds from fanfics that leave nearly everything to what your imagination can do with the words on the screen!

JKR is my god. Or not.

"I had always seen Dumbledore as gay, but in a sense that's not a big deal. The book wasn't about Dumbledore being gay. It was just that from the outset obviously I knew he had this big, hidden secret, and that he flirted with the idea of exactly what Voldemort goes on to do, he flirted with the idea of racial domination, that he was going to subjugate the Muggles. So that was Dumbledore's big secret.

Why did did he flirt with that?" she asks. "He's an innately good man, what would make him do that. I didnt even think it through that way, it just seemed to come to me, I thought 'I know why he did it, he fell in love.' And whether they physically consummated this infatuation or not is not the issue. The issue is love. It's not about sex. So that's what I knew about Dumbledore. And it's relevant only in so much as he fell in love and was made an utter fool of by love. He lost his moral compass completely when he fell in love and I think subsequently became very mistrusting of his own judgment in those matters so became quite asexual. He led a celibate and bookish life."

Clearly some people didn't see it that way. How does she react to those who disagree with a homosexual character in a children's novel? "So what?" she retorts immediately "It is a very interesting question because I think homophobia is a fear of people loving, more than it is of the sexual act. There seems to be an innate distaste for the love involved, which I find absolutely extraordinary. There were people who thought, well why haven't we seen Dumbledore's angst about being gay?" Rowling is clearly amused by this and rightly so. "Where was that going to come in? And then the other thing was-and I had letters saying this-that, as a gay man, he would never be safe to teach in a school."

An air of incredulity descends on the room as if Rowling herself still can not believe this statement. She continues: "He's a very old single man. You have to ask: why is it so interesting? People have to examine their own attitudes. It's a shade of character. Is it the most important thing about him? No, it's Dumbledore for God's sake. There are 20 things that are relavant to the story before his sexuality." Bottom line then: he isn't a gay character; he's a character that just happens to be gay. Rowling concurs wholeheartedly.

I belong to the camp that doesn't mind that JKR isn't disclosing everything under the sun. I'm sure there are plenty of things that she never set down in concrete besides whether ADGG was consummated or not. Just like I suspect she never delved deep into Grindelwald's background. But just being completely realistic about things - two months, two teenage boys - it's not likely that they're going to keep their hands to themselves. Even if Gellert is slutting it up to manipulate Albus, I'm sure he's also doing it to vent some frustration...maybe I read too much into it...

Anyway, that's the way I've always seen ADGG. In a way, it mirrors the pattern of other relationships in the Potterverse. Like Harry/Ginny. Ginny was in love with Harry (just as Albus was in love with Gellert), then there's a cooling-off period when Ginny gets over him, then Harry, through adversity, slowly comes to realise that he's liked Ginny all along (Gellert reflects and realises Albus was the one for him) except in their case there isn't a happy ending. Okay it's a vast oversimplification...but hopefully you kind of get what I'm getting at?

There will ALWAYS be people who are unhappy with the announcement that Dumbledore was celibate, just as many people are unhappy with the fact that George married his twin's ex. Or that Harry and Ginny didn't choose creative names for their offspring. Or that Luna married someone whose grandfather was born in the 19th century. This is just how JKR has arranged her universe. We're just guests in it. I don't think it's our place to go and bitch about what she chooses to do with it - would you tell your grandma to invest in air freshener and a new sofa? I don't like some things about my grandma's house. But I either tolerate them, or leave for my own place - it would be really rude if I told her that her place smells and her furniture is tacky. It would be invalidating her position as mistress of her house.

JKR is not God. She has imperfections and shortcomings like any other writer. There will be holes in her universe like any other fantasy universe. But most of all, just like any human being, she carries stereotypes and assumptions in her head. And on the Grindeldore debate, I'm sure her publicist has gone through the fact that she can't win no matter what she says. If she says one thing, bigoted morons like the one in the Sun Herald in Sydney a few months ago will have a field day. If she says the other, then people like us, who are fighting for LGBTQ rights, will be enraged. I understand why she's keeping her mouth shut and trying to suspend judgment on it, and why she's done some of the things she has. I don't think many other writers in history have been pulled up and judged in the same way she has.

meaning of life

What is the meaning of "the meaning" of life?

In the final chapter of his book, What Does It All Mean?, Thomas Nagel explores the meaning of life, defining a “meaningful” life as one that makes a difference to the world around us, and debunking the plausibility of this. But significance has not always been thought to fulfil the requirements of a meaningful life; philosophers such as Cicero, and later, Kant, considered morality to be the key. What these interpretations of meaning both demonstrate is the desire for absolute reality, the feeling that what we hold to be true is the ultimate truth. However, I believe that none of these three systems – significance, morality or objective reality – are necessary to lead a meaningful life, as the answer to the meaning of life is ultimately subjective.

When Nagel discusses “the meaning of life”, he interprets “meaningful” in the sense of being significant, not just in a solipsistic sense to oneself, but to one’s surroundings. He opens the chapter by opening his readers to the possibility that their lives are meaningless, using the nearly clichéd axiom that soon “we’ll all be dead”. He describes how science has shown the human lifespan to be insignificant when compared against the timeline of the universe, and how we cannot therefore be of importance to the world outside our own selves. Nagel next shows that while we are perfectly capable of justifying the day-to-day things that we do “within life”, we cannot find a reason behind our existences as a whole. Whenever we observe our thoughts and actions from outside our own selves, it is as if they take place pointlessly. (Nagel, 1987) Evidently, if we are to have meaning in life, we will not find it by appealing to the universe or to eternity.

Nagel then deals with two well-known challenges to his reasoning. But the most common claim – that one’s life is of concern to other people – is easily refuted, because it begs the question of why other people’s lives in turn are so significant. If we continue trying to find meaning as a part of a whole, we sink into a pit of infinite regress, as we continue to ask, “What is the point of it?” Others use religious justification to invalidate Nagel’s starting point that our lives are insignificant to the world around us. If God is the world around us, and our lives matter to Him, then there can be no doubt that our lives are meaningful. God requires no explanation for Himself. Unfortunately, the idea that we cannot question this seems “incomprehensible” to many people, including Nagel. Nagel therefore argues that our lives cannot be significant and therefore meaningful, although he does soften his opinion on religious justification, saying perhaps that it is meant as an admission that the universe may not be able to be understood by us. Nevertheless, being a part of a whole cannot justify significance as the key to a meaningful life, and God is not easy to accept either. (Nagel, 1987)

As with all of Nagel’s chapters, his discussion about the meaningfulness of our lives is less of an argument for one particular point than a discussion, as he moves on to challenge his previous challenges, reverting to the point that meaning in life will not stem from significance; we can only be significant to ourselves. The way this group, whom Nagel appears to sympathise with, resolves the meaning and significance issue is by embracing the belief that “there is no point at all”. It echoes Albert Camus’ existentialist idea of “the Absurd”, the word Nagel chooses to end on. The conclusion, that we can lead satisfying lives by accepting that our lives are meaningless, is difficult to fault. The only problem is that many people feel disempowered by the idea that their lives do not matter in the grand scheme of things. (Nagel, 1987) In this way, Nagel reverts to his first conclusion: that we cannot use external recognition to give meaning to our lives.

Although Nagel characterised meaningfulness as significance, others have thought that a meaningful life is not so much “significant”, but morally upright. Cicero captured the idea with his concept of the “beata vita” or “blessed life”, based on a school of thought known as Stoicism (Wilson, 2002). In keeping with a virtue-based system of ethics, “living well” required a person to act with a “morally perfect frame of mind” (Sedley, 2005). Virtue was to be pursued for the sake of itself, so in order to live meaningfully, one would focus on having good qualities such as dignity, honesty and piety. In contrast to Nagel’s “religious justification scenario”, Cicero uses the Gods as moral exemplars for humans to follow, instead of the answer to everything. He claims that by acquiring “the virtues from where the blessed life comes into existence”, humans can equal the Gods “in every way except immortality”, which he feels has nothing to do with living meaningfully (Wilson, 2002). Kant concurs, saying that all the things we can do to make our lives worthwhile are morally right (Burnham, 2006). Thus, by living in accordance with virtue, Cicero and Kant thought we could make our lives meaningful.

However, the view of morality being equivalent to meaning is just easily countered as any argument for significance. Naturally, it invites opposition when the metal-ethical nature of moral value is considered. For life’s meaning to be based on virtue, these virtues must be universal throughout the whole human race. But many people would argue that morality is ultimately a subjective matter (Metz, 2007). Secondly, Cicero, with his “beata vita”, is putting forth an ideal impossible for us to live up to. Since nobody could be wholly moral for his or her entire life; would this not mean it is possible for nobody to live a fully meaningful life? Finally, Kant’s view in particular makes a mistake in treating humans as perfectly rational, without “human needs and feelings”. As Richard Taylor points out, all this virtuous behaviour “must not be done from any motive of compassion or sentiment of love.” (Taylor, 2000) Clearly, morality is too narrow a lens to value our lives through; the vision we get is just as bleak as Nagel’s use of external significance, which showed that life is meaningless.

These two visions of a meaningful life – external recognition and virtue – both display our yearning for something independent of us. In the first case, we have our existence validated by the world around us – friends, family or God; in the second case, we have our actions validated by an independent moral reality – the Virtues. They mean that our quotidian actions, such as earning money, eating and sleeping, which Nagel raises in his chapter, are either in response to a valid cause, or done with morally valid intentions. In short, we would like there to be some sort of objective reality that underlies everything we do. Most people would agree that life in a “virtual reality machine”, à la Neo in the film The Matrix, would be a meaningless existence, because the day-to-day “reality” which Neo acts on is not actually real. Conversely, we are repulsed by Cypher, who chooses to return to “the Matrix” from the real world (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999). Our search for a “Theory of Everything” also reflects our deep-rooted faith in reality. We think that there is something “out there” to be found which explains everything about our existence. Essentially, it is a question of the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, the search for something beyond the physical realm that can only be reached through reasoning (Mautner, 2005). Metaphysics is greatly concerned with “ultimate” explanations (Conee & Sider, 2005). In comparison to the random and chaotic world which we live in, these facts can impart greater meaning to our lives.

However, the case for an objective meaning of life is riddled with flaws, even if we ignore sceptical arguments against absolute reality, which were discussed in Nagel’s first chapter (Nagel, 1987). Objectivism in the context of metaphysics and the meaning of life holds that there are “certain inherently worthwhile or finally valuable conditions that confer meaning for anyone”, and are independent of us and our minds, as well as any God-figure. (Metz, 2007). Pure objectivism ignores subjective, but essential factors such as our attitudes towards our actions. We would question the meaningfulness of someone’s charity work if it bored them because they did it solely to raise their public image. Even if we adopt a more lenient view, allowing our emotions to interact with the objective conditions, we do not address the way these conditions can be universal and work with the vast plethora of human emotions. Most importantly, all objectivist theories only allow segments of our lives to impart meaning with their contents, even though we know that the way the parts come together should be important too (Metz, 2007). The mythological Sisyphus was punished by the Gods for disobedience, forced to push a giant boulder up a mountain. The difficulty of his labour should have made it meaningful. But, because the rock rolled back down the slope at the end of every day, he had to repeat this ad infinitum, whereby it became meaningless. No matter how we attempt to appeal to an objective reality, we will be unsuccessful in finding meaning in our lives.

Like Douglas Adams, who turned the solemn idea of a deep “meaning of life” on its head with the number forty-two, I do not believe we need an objective reality to lead meaningful lives; our lives are meaningful if they are meaningful to us. As David Schmidtz says,

“Life is a house. Meaning is what you do to make it home…if our walls are bare, the solution is not to spend our days stoically staring at bare walls, or philosophizing about their meaning, or lack thereof, but to put up a few photographs…we need not fear bare walls. We need not deceive ourselves about their bareness. We need not dwell on the ‘fundamental underlying’ bareness of walls we have filled with pictures.” (2001).

Subjectivism permits meaning to vary from person to person, depending on our unique circumstances and mental states (Metz, 2007), thus encompassing infinite possibilities. Hence, the idea that our lives are meaningful while we do what we think is important to us, which is the opposite of objectivism, has great appeal.

But the way in which subjectivism is applied is controversial. While it is easy to conclude that subjectivism is a matter of trying to fully engage ourselves in some activity or experience (Schmidtz, 2001), this implies there must be some objective element to the way we value our activities. Taylor refers to Sisyphus, showing how even if he enjoyed rolling boulders up mountains, his life would not be meaningful. It would only show that “like most mortals, he has been rendered content with a meaningless existence” (Taylor, 1999). The usual defence is that no one actually desires to do trivial things, at least not after “some sort of reflective thought” (Metz, 2007). A more convincing interpretation comes from Albert Camus, who imagines Sisyphus as “happy” because he retains his “conscious” freedom of thought, and can see that his fate was “created by him” (Camus, 1942). The Gods can punish Sisyphus for eternity, but they cannot alter his contempt for them. We can give our lives meaning by embracing this freedom, “making our own assessments of value” and “living accordingly in the situations where we find ourselves” (Blackford, 2003). I believe that by interpreting subjectivism in this light, that we are masters of our destinies, it is less easily refuted. It is both emotionally attractive, and intellectually convincing.

The meaning of “the meaning” of life has undergone a wide variety of interpretations. Some people will only be satisfied if their actions leave a permanent mark on the universe, others will be content if their actions are morally immaculate. Still others have thought that it hinges on the authenticity of an external world, but evidently, all we need to be sure of is our freedom to defy “absurdity” with our minds. In this respect, Nagel was not completely right in searching for meaning “in some larger sense”. As God says in the film Bruce Almighty, “That's everybody's problem. You keep looking up.” We should not be looking up for answers – we should be looking inside ourselves.

---

• Adams, D. (1992). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. London: Pan Books.
• Blackford, R. (2003, October). Volume XLVII Number 10 - October 2003: Sisyphus and the Meaning of Life . Retrieved February 14, 2008, from Quadrant Magazine: http://quadrant.org.au/php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=469
• Burnham, D. (2006). Kant, Immanuel. Retrieved February 14, 2008, from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kantaest.htm
• Camus, A. (1942). The Myth of Sisyphus. Retrieved February 15, 2008, from The History Department: http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111camus.html
• Conee, E., & Sider, T. (2005). Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Mautner, T. (2005). The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. Camberwell: Penguin Books.
• Metz, T. (2007, May 15). The Meaning of Life. Retrieved February 8, 2008, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/
• Nagel, T. (1987). What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Schmidtz, D. (2001). David Schmidtz - The Meanings of Life. Retrieved February 16, 2008, from Philosophy Department: http://web.arizona.edu/~phil/faculty/extra/dschmidtz/dschmidtz_meanings_of_life.htm
• Sedley, D. (2005). Stoicism. Retrieved February 11, 2008, from Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A112SECT16
• Shadyac, T. (Director). (2003). Bruce Almighty [Motion Picture].
• Taylor, R. (2000). Good and Evil . Prometheus Books .
• Taylor, R. (1999). The Meaning of Life. Retrieved February 7, 2008, from Philosophy Now: http://www.philosophynow.org/archive/articles/24taylor.htm
• Wachowski, A., & Wachowski, L. (Directors). (1999). The Matrix [Motion Picture].
• Wilson, S. (2002). The Thought of Cicero. London: Bristol Classical Press.

I can't believe it's been a year

Can any sense be made of teleology in a world where life emerges through gradual evolution and natural selection?

Darwin’s theory was drastically different to his contemporaries’ in his proposition that complex organisms can evolve via a process of random mutation and natural selection, thus rendering redundant the intelligent designer, the invisible hand which gradually perfected life on earth. But in order to answer the question as to whether teleology is denied by concepts of gradual evolution and natural selection, we first need to establish a definition of these very complex ideas.

The dictionary definition of teleology is “the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes”, derived from the Greek word telos which means “end”. When this is applied to the world, particularly by theists, it is often associated with the doctrine that God created the world to be of service to human beings. It was particularly favoured by classical philosophers – such as Cicero, in De Natura Deorum (about the nature of the gods).

“I seem to have explained enough, by how much human nature surpasses all other living creatures. From this it must be understood that neither the structure and design of our limbs nor such strength of intellect and reason could have been brought about by chance. It remains for me to explain and at some point to conclude, that everything which exists in this world, which human beings use, has been created and prepared for the sake of man.”

That in fact is the argument from design; the theory which Darwin sought to debunk, since he felt that the appearance of design in the world was an illusion. Darwin’s explanation, on the other hand, is based on the following basic principles:

1. Species are comprised of individual organisms which vary slightly from one another with respect to their many features. For example, a random mutation in a creature may produce a patch of photosensitive cells.
2. Over time, populations increase. But the environment has a limit (based on resources, disease, predation) to how many organisms it can support – thus there is a constant struggle for survival among members of a species.
3. Some organisms will have variations which give them an advantage in this struggle. The creature with the special cells could detect the direction a light or shadow was coming from – allowing it to detect and escape predators better.
4. The organisms with these favourable variations tend to survive better, and go on to reproduce.
5. Offspring inherit the variations of their parents. Therefore they the favourable variations will be passed on more frequently than others; Darwin labelled this tendency “Natural Selection”. The creature will produce offspring which also have the ability to detect light.
6. The character of the whole species changes. Given enough time, enough differences may be produced, and a new species altogether may emerge. Our light-detecting creature would have been the ancestor of an organism possessing an eye.

“It’s something unpredictable but in the end it’s right”

~ Green Day

I believe that we should not immediately dismiss teleological notions in biology, as there are several ways the world can still be explained in terms of ends and purposes. Darwin described natural selection as a process that worked “for the good of each species”, so perhaps he himself was trying to revive, rather than eliminate, teleology from natural science. Moreover, we must not forget that many scientists today still see no contradiction between Darwin’s theory and God, believing that He works through and guides evolution. Yet another modern view is that everything directs itself to meet a certain fate; after being catalysed by an initial cause, it moves itself to a final, teleological “cause”. On the surface, at least, “purposiveness” in our world still remains, although each form is fraught with certain flaws.

“I was dying – to save my own life I changed my body – every single cell – ”

~ The Doctor, Doctor Who: Children in Need

It must be noted, however, that The Doctor, is proposing a Lamarckian approach, similar to saying that a giraffe’s neck lengthened through its need to eat leaves at the top of a tree. The first teleological approach, the notion of survival as the common goal, is summed up in Darwin’s words – nature demonstrates “a prodigality of resources for gaining the very same end”.

Those who defend this particular explanation of evolution, such as Dr Francisco Ayala, ask us to distinguish between “external” and “internal” teleology. External teleology is the result of an agent – a blade has external teleology, as humans have fashioned it for the purpose of cutting. Internal teleology reflects immanent or inherent purposes and is present in the features of living things. The eye exists for the purpose of seeing, although not due to the conscious actions of a designer. In this sense, we can talk of teleology, because natural selection has created a structure which serves a purpose – to contribute to survival.

This approach also harmonises with Thompson, who concludes that there are “optimal solutions for common problems”. This is why natural selection appears to favour certain designs, such as hexagons in honeycombs and the plates of turtle shells; they “approximate a circle and maximise area”, or fish and clams display “nearly identical artifices”. And as Gould says, “natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments”. A species’ improving and attempting to perfect its relationship with nature thus appears to be an intrinsic goal, instinctively teleological.

Unfortunately, some complications emerge, firstly because reverse causation starts to interfere – our logic is disturbed because we do not like to explain a cause by proffering a future outcome. Secondly, if we consider the eye again, when we providing a teleological explanation, we are saying that the eye has photosensitive cells in order that a creature can see and survive (need for survival has caused this feature). However, according to evolutionary theory, the photosensitive cells have caused sight and survival, because they have allowed the creature outlives its peers (the feature has ensured the creature’s survival). If we follow through carefully, we realise that the ultimate cause is whatever caused the genetic mutation in the first place. This is random – Chaos Theory is the reason for individualism – and it seems ludicrous to say that a random event happens for a reason. Hence, we cannot build a foundation for teleology in biology by postulating survival as the fundamental purpose of evolution.

“If God, who is all powerful, and who is not limited by space and time, chose to use the mechanism of evolution to create you and me, who are we to say that wasn’t an absolutely elegant plan?

~ Francis Collins, Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

This approach simply suggests that evolution is a “tool”, a means for God to carry out his work. God, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, has great goals in mind for us, and is guiding the growth and progress of the world. The teleology then is obvious; the final end which the universe approaches is God’s plan. God initially created, and is currently controlling, the entire course of evolution. Here we have neither the paradox nor the conflict between chance and reason associated with survival, and yet we have a fully teleologically explained world.

The chief objection to this is that it is merely intelligent design masquerading under a fresh disguise, for two main reasons. There are those who reject the concept of any external intelligence altogether, based on physical imperfections in nature. The “Panda’s Thumb” is inefficient, “clumsy and built from an odd part”, while the “goose bumps” which form on human skin make abject attempts to fluff up absent fur. God’s creatures have not been modelled via evolution to reflect His beauty, wisdom and power, because everything has been “jury-rigged” and improvised, sometimes demonstrating engineering incompetency, from the components of ancestors. Furthermore, even if He is using Evolution as a tool to engineer us, the presence of viruses and parasites that do nothing but cause suffering to trillions of creatures proves that God is far from omnibenevolent, but extremely sadistic. Why would He want to be remembered for the misery he caused? How can this be propelling us towards a good and purposeful end? In no way is this the objective, scientific theory of evolution that we have come to respect.

But there are still counter-arguments. The complainers posing their pandas are not considering us to be anything but a completely finished product. Perhaps we and the pandas are still works in progress. Or, perhaps God develops us with other reasons in mind; after all, “goose bumps” are yet another means for humans to communicate emotions such as fear. The second group is looking purely from a human point of view; we ourselves have brought death and destruction to many animals, such as the Dodo and the Tasmanian Tiger. God, on the other hand, is impartial. We ourselves are not omniscient like God is – since we are biased by our perspective, and we cannot hope to understand God – and so we cannot critically evaluate his actions, nor reach a conclusion on their teleological validity.

“Others think he set up the universe to unfold from the Big Bang to unfold like a computer program.”

~ Michael Behe, Biochemistry professor, Lehigh University; Senior fellow, Discovery Institute

Perhaps God kick-started the whole process, created life and conditions necessary for it to evolve and then stepped back. He has of course a final idea fixed in His mind, which we aren’t informed about, but the journey we take to get there is not his concern. Paul Davies steers away from Cicero’s almighty Deus, and focuses on the “fine-tuned laws” of nature, and “initial cosmological conditions”, which he believes could not have been put into place through the elimination of competitors. These result in a “cosmic blueprint”. According to Davies, the universe “emerged from primeval chaos in a sequence of self-organising processes”. The natural progression, given this catalyst, would be towards the evolution of conscious life. He represents this on a “sausage machine”, which is fed basic material, processes the material, and spits out a finished product:

All we have to do to adapt Davies’ tool to our concerns is to replace “Laws of Physics” with “Laws of Evolution”, and “organised complexity” with “final plan” and we have a diagram representing the last teleological model. The Agent (Davies sees it as “qualities” with a “genuine transcendent reality”) puts the necessary initiation ingredients into the top, winds up the machine of evolution, and random mutation and natural selection then progress out of external control. The Agent has a goal – “sausages” – but doesn’t know how the “meat” they put in will combine to form them. Out of all three considered; teleology of survival, teleology of God the guide and teleology of the catalyst, this is the most complex. This is because it manages to integrate the causality without the contradictions, and the agent without the risk of sympathising with intelligent design.

The main error in this diagram or system is that it is not the evolution part that is actually teleological, since it is driving itself. Things could well happen which were never intended to happen; a bacterium may evolve, which goes on to cause an epidemic. Only some aspects of the system, those controlled by the agent and performed for the sake of an end, are so. You could possibly take a hard deterministic line of reasoning, that there is a chain of actions and reactions starting with the Agent, saying that even the mutations which drive evolution are not random, just unexplainable at the present (even the minute particle the “muon” has a reason for existence). But then, everything is indiscriminately teleological, not evolution in particular, making the term “teleology” useless. So we can conclude that the “computer program”, coded and left to run, cannot be spoken of as “teleological” by us.

“The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed…”

~ Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

As shown above, none of the theories are perfect. It is certainly interesting to explore teleological notions in our world – the goal of survival, the divine director, the cosmic computer – they force us to consider our world in a very different light, and each has its own merits. But Teleology itself suffers from problems starting with reverse causation (since an “end” can explain a beginning). When we try to combine it with evolution and natural selection, we encounter confrontations ranging from the incompatibility of chance and reason, debates on what evolution truly entails and systems that look partly teleological and partly not. These highlight the gaps in our scientific accounts of the workings of the world – into which it is tempting to shove reassurances like an intelligent creator figure, or a teleological theory that makes us believe we are definitely on a path towards something good. Teleology therefore plays no part in our modern-day, naturalistic accounts of the world based on evolutionary theory.

If anything, I think this proves how complex the gathering of knowledge is, particularly about the invisible, whether it is cloaked by our perspective (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Theory says that you cannot observe an electron’s path without interfering with that path) or the march of time (wiping out the past, forcing us to make inferences). Forrest challenges us, “Shouldn’t the fact that the entities in question cannot in principle be observed give us at least some pause?” Perhaps we should at least think twice.

Categorization

Why is categorization stupid? The ultimate procrastination rant...
Started on 27/4/06, fully fleshed out on 24/6/07 – ie just before the May block of assessments last year, and within my midyears this year

You know, on April 27th 2006 I wrote in my diary that Mr W had made particularly irate. He had the nerve to taunt me with kissing noises just because I said I liked Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting and then proceed to exclaim surprise at my being so typical, “so adolescent”. Allow me to take the liberty to have a rant about LABELING like this. Why is – CATEGORIZATION – so stupid?

1. It creates social conflict
2. It causes mental instability and discontent
3. It’s so superficial!!
4. It cheapens our individuality

Part 1

Categorisation is a major cause of conflict in societies. If we could all simply see ourselves as humans, ignoring racial/religious differences, let’s list the wars that wouldn't have happened.

1. The Crusades (what's with converting the heathen?)
2. The pillaging, plundering and burning between the ancient civilizations...which I will not bother to list properly (Romans, Britons, Spartans, Athenians, Egyptians, Nubians, Macedonians, Mycenaeans, Cretins – lol do the Cretins come from Crete, really? Ok digression is BAD this early in a rant...)
3. The Cold War (oh the memories of 10th grade...)
4. The Korean war/the Vietnam war (north vs south...so sad...)
5. WWII (Nazis =/= better than everyone)
6. The French revolution
7. The Russian revolution
8. Actually any revolution where the “working class” usurped the “upper class”

I haven’t done history for 3 years so I can’t think of any more. But as we all know, intolerance drive people to clash culturally with other people. If we didn’t classify people as “poor” and “rich”, or “black” and “white” as we do today, I don’t think most of the wars on earth would have happened.

I don’t care how much you claim war contributes to human development. “The crusades brought medicine to medieval Europe.” Wah. If we’d all been tolerant of each other, information would have been freely shared and global progress would have been even faster. Oh and “War brings out the best in people?” So we need to kill a couple of people for the good of all? Sounds decidedly utilitarian.

Also I don’t give a damn about the economy...ok I may not be a commerce-y major but I'm pretty sure war isn’t the ONLY way of improving a country’s economical status, I’m sure there are ways of doing it without sacking priceless human lives. Incidentally, I'm not a communist either. Admittedly communism is a nice idea, but given the way humans function, it isn’t going to work. Remind me of this one day and you'll get to hear another raving rant.

Back to the topic: Without war, there would have been fewer lives lost, and we wouldn't have lost any potential “great minds”, who could have accelerated our collective advancement. Let’s all be friendly happy chappies. Ok so it’s not that simple, but we could at least try a bit harder? The end.

Part 2

Now categorization causes pure, unadulterated misery. In the past we saw it through open conflict. Today teenage angst is caused by our tendency to throw people into groups. “Emo” kids descend further into darkness, feeling they have a right and or responsibility to now, simply because people see them as “emo”. Nerds ostracize themselves because they have a preconception that nobody will understand them. The “popular kids” are pressured to maintain the qualities which are associated with “popular kids”, lest they fall from this category.

In more serious terms, Anorexia is caused by an obsession with wanting to belong to the “thin” group. And what about the communities that throw people out who have disabilities or different sexual tendencies? Makes life miserable for everyone – both the categorized and the categorizers – it’s all a matter of perspective! This stems from the problem that any category or group is not only defined by who is in it, but by who isn’t in it, which delegates superior connotations to one, and inferior to the other.

Part 3

Categories created by society are fleeting but few people manage to see this. For example, the thin/fat dichotomy which brings about incredible divisions in today’s world was only manufactured in modern times. Only a few hundred years ago, fat meant you were wealthy and cool, whereas thin meant you were destitute. You may argue that a category will always EXIST, but its meaning may change, but then doesn’t that seem to make the category MEANINGLESS anyway? Hmm...

Part 4

If you know me really well, you’ll realize that as much as PMS makes me whine about my shortcomings, I am actually fairly happy with who I am, and I rarely care how people try to make me out. I recognize that my favorite things can be attributed to certain teenage stereotypes, each one of which is so superficial that it can be summed up in 3 words (see part 3). For example:

• My poetry = angsty emo escapist
• My love of music = Asian music geek
• My obsession with Johnny Depp = squealing teenage fangurl
• My book collecting = four-eyed bookworm
• My technophile-ness = yuppie with vaio (or ipod)
• My vegetarianism = annoying animal activist
• My dress sense = Buddhist boho pacifist
• My rants = ruthlessly ambitious feminist

I am also sure I am not one of the only people who can simultaneously be a teacher’s pet and a teacher’s nightmare at once. And last but not least, I may drive a car, work, have moved out of my family home, cook for myself, not drink at parties to watch out for my friends AND I may go around the party house the morning after cleaning up for them (Hayden: “you’re too domesticated!”)...BUT I still get mistaken for a twelve-year-old because of my raw, childish energy (and tactlessness, I unfortunately suspect). That and my height. But that’s another story.

The point I was trying to make in the first place though, was that categorization disregards our individuality. Not only are categories vast generalizations, but you should remember that Nature bestowed upon you a genetic code unlike anybody else’s – when you become a part of a group, you are seen only as a member of that group, rather than a discrete entity. Although part of being human is having companionship and forming social networks, part of being human is also having a separate consciousness of your own. So yes, go ahead and “belong” to your groups, but don’t forget to see yourself as an individual in a GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this terribly well – but I sort of want to make the point that we should be taking a slightly different perspective on the concept of a “group” (or category).

Conclusion:

So this has turned into a rant about me! Ok I’m really sorry – but I really did want to show how proud I was that I can’t be fully classified into any group – and I want you guys to be proud of yourselves too. It’s been said so many times, but too many very intelligent people around me waste their energy trying to conform – because “what’s wrong with being in a group?” I’ve told you.

I will also tell you to leave me alone if you can’t accept me the way I am, a collage of idiosyncrasies and memories which was never meant to be fully worked out. Don’t think I'm a social retard just because I'm computer obsessed, or emo just because I write angsty poetry. Don’t label me a drama queen just because I talk and sing loudly. Don’t call me a baby just because I don’t know what a “boat race” is. Don’t suppose I'm a lesbian just because I make snide comments about the patriarchy and don't do the whole dating/hookups thing. Don’t assume I’m making plans to be a vet just because I don’t eat meat and happen to stand up for goldfish rights (coming later). Don’t exclude me from beach outings just because I like my study time. Don’t look so surprised when I play a wicked Chopin nocturne on piano after getting too familiar with my pop music voice. And, for fuck’s sake, don’t call me a typical, teenage, mainstream, predictable adolescent on the basis of admiring Matt Damon!