Open Letter to Environment Haters

I like the environment. It’s been good to me. It warms the cockles of my heart. So when it asked me to write a post in my own style for Blog Action Day, I was more than happy to oblige.

Insofar as it is convenient for me to do so, I always do what I can to help the environment.  I drive a hybrid car and will eventually switch to electric.  I reuse and reduce.  I avoid using electricity in daylight (the nature of electricity requires power companies to produce as much as the maximum electricity used of the previous year).  And I don’t eat meat (factory farming uses more water than we use for human consumption, more land than you can think of, and produces more greenhouse gases than cars).  It’s part of my ‘do no harm’ moral theory.

And yet, intellectually, I have no real reason to do so.  I hedge my bets, but I don’t suppose we’ll do any better in the large scale than so many other populations have failed at in the small scale before (Ref. J. Diamond’s “Collapse”).

I fear our race should have played out the Prisoner’s Dilemma 10,000 more generations before the advent of technology. My fear is that only in that way could a true morality and conservationist respect for nature develop. As it is, we’re in a rather precarious point in our history in which the combination of individual demand is having a detrimental effect on our environment. We’re a bunny population that has outgrown its food supply, a too virulent virus where the best strategy for each individual finally comes directly at odds with the necessary group strategy of survival.

And I’m pessimistic. I think that our individualistic societies are too short-sighted to realize they are damning the world or too selfish to restrain their own uses and abuses.  We’ll be choked to death by the free rider problem.  Oops.

If you disagree, that’s cool. It’s intellectual masturbation anyway. Neither of us will know how it turns out so it’s foolish to feel certainty, anger, or superiority anyway. At least the course of action that my point of view requires is a sustainable one. Individual ignorance is not. However, I don’t have to worry about the future. My genes shall only be represented insofar as my siblings are related to me. I’m just not going to be a jerk and mess it up for those whose genes will go on.

But good luck with that.  Seriously,

— Pixel Q. Styx

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The Recipe for Really?

I realized some time ago that most arguments (esp. bad ones) can be deflated with a few well-placed words. If they’re really good words, they can also deflate the person’s ego and get a laugh from nearby bystanders.

I found a way to do this all with one word. The titular “Really?”

However, you can’t just say “Really?” in any old way. You have to say it in the particular proportions I’ve discovered. Like any recipe, you can modify it slightly to suite your own needs, but don’t try to work off book unless you know what you’re doing. Okay?

Here goes:

How to make a Really?:

Ingredients:

1. Tone of voice with 60 percent inquisitiveness, 10 percent condescension, 5 percent bewilderment, and 25 percent curiosity.
2. A stare that is simultaneously blank and mock ‘caught-off-guard’
3. A working neck
4. Facial expression with 40 percent grimace in embarrassment and 60 percent sympathetic questioning. Imagine you’re a lawyer desperately trying to defend an innocent person who keeps saying stupid things.

Instructions:

1. Wait until the appropriate moment. Usually this will be shortly after a bad argument escapes the lips of the person you’re debating. For instance, “Buildings can’t fall like that, Bush must have planned 9/11.”
2. Look at him blankly for precisely one moment. It is important for the silence to stretch for one full moment while you seem like you’re momentarily caught off guard by the argument.
3. Tilt your head to the right while simultaneously grimace and scrunch your eyebrows together while raising them.
4. Say “Really?” as if they just embarrassed themselves.
5. If needed, say “Seriously?” Or “you really believe that?” Each time make your grimace more pained.

While I generally hate rhetoric or sophistry, sometimes its the most effective tool in your arsenal. Try saying this sometime today. It’s surprising how well it works.

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Advice for First-Time Parents

2: I think I’m getting my hearing back, how about you?
1: What?
2: WHAT??

• In order to not spoil your child, pay equal amounts of attention to something else. We recommend drugs or alcohol.
• The sooner you start feeding your child meat and veggies, the sooner he’ll be a man and not let you down.
• If your boy sees the color pink before he’s five, he’ll turn gay.
• Don’t let your child see you fight.  It will traumatize him.
• If you really push all the things you weren’t good at in primary school, your child will become good at them and stop being an embarrassment to you.
• When your child starts elementary school, you are no longer responsible for his education.  You can literally take the next 13 years off from learning.
• If you make your daughter think she’s constantly fat, it’ll push her to lose weight and be healthy.
• Kids have too many dreams.  Please eliminate three.
• If your child has an impractical desire, part of your job as a good parent is to convince them they really love something else that’s more practical.  No sense letting life beat that lesson into them when you can do it instead.
• Take your child to church with you every week so that he learns to worship God how you do.
• Remind your child to bury all her questions about religion deep down inside.  Jesus will answer them all in the afterlife.
• Remember to make your teenage child aware of the unnaturalness of their libido during their teenage years.
• Let your child know she can trust you with anything and everything.  Then, to make sure she’s not keeping secrets, keep up to date on her diary.  The more you know of what she puts into her diary, the better parent you are.  Remember: you can tell how good of a parent you are by how many of your child’s secrets you know.
• A good game to play in a two-parent household is to challenge each other to see who can be the better parent.  A quick way to get an advantage is to convince your child that her other parent beats you and has a floozy on the side.
• Buying everything that’s popular for your child will ensure he won’t be made fun of at school.  To offset the possibility of your child becoming spoiled, we suggest you beat them when they talk back.
• Teach your child that everything you taught them is right and their teacher is wrong.  Getting your child’s respect is more important for you than it is for her teacher, after all.
• Children are a great source of cheap labor.  Increase your child’s chores every time they ask for something or talk back to you.
• Make sure to discourage any questions your child might ask that you don’t know the answer to.  No sense having your child lose respect for your abilities.
• If your child tries to tell you something important to her, it’s important to avoid treating it seriously.  Your children come to you for reassurance and levity.  They don’t want to be more worried after talking to you than before.
• Keep a running tab of everything your children have cost you.  Include intangibles, hypotheticals and abstracts.  Then, instead of paying for their college tuition, give them a bill.  Be sure you include interest: it’ll make them realize you consider them adults.

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Get the Vote Back In

Warning: sociopolitical analytical post.
This is part two of a two part series. The question for this post is: “Why do Americans vote?” The analysis is broader than the U.S., however and can be applied to any large western country.

Why do people vote?

In Australia and certain other countries it’s because the law demands it. I’m still not sure how I feel about that, but it seems to work fine most times. In other countries where it’s not compulsory, people vote because they don’t want to ‘shirk’ their democratic rights and responsibilities, because they have a candidate or issue they ‘care’ about or (in the case of my friend Frank) because they just hate incumbents.

Sadly, I think Frank is on to something. At the very least he has a reason to vote. Most times, people go out on election day to help a bill or candidate pass (or to hinder its progress). Unfortunately, these bills are rarely local and so one vote makes so little difference that it’s no more effective than just crossing your fingers.

Additionally unfortunately, there is usually more than one bill or candidate on any ballot box. So what do people do when they finish voting for the issue or person they care about? They keep voting.

They wouldn’t want to shirk their democratic duty to add randomness to any electoral outcome, would they?

Continue reading Get the Vote Back In…

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